Video: Bicycle shop trashed, looted after Cape Town lights festival

Cape Town’s annual festive lights gathering is supposed to be a joyous occasion for families, but things turned ugly in the late hours after the event.

On Monday around 5am, a bicycle shop in Long Street was trashed and looted.

The store, known as Rook Cycles, uploaded a CCTV video to Instagram and Facebook documenting the incident.

The 46-second long video shows more than 20 looters jump through the store’s broken window, snatching bicycles and bags. At one point, a group of trespassers actually fight over a bicycle in the store.

“We’re so optimistic about South Africa. We’ve had opportunities to open elsewhere, but we’ve always stayed firm that this is where we need to be,” the store wrote beneath the video.

“It’s just too bad amongst all the great people we have here, there’s a bunch of worthless oxygen thieves that ruin it for the good folks out there.”

The post places blame on the City of Cape Town for inviting “the 10s of thousands of drunk / drugged idiots” to the festival.

This wasn’t the only incident that took place on the day. Two deaths were reported in the city centre in the early hours of Monday morning. According to an iOL report, more than 39 000 people attended the event at the Grand Parade.

Feature image: screenshot, Rook Cycles via Facebook