Cape Town - Two people collapsed and died in the Khayelitsha Shopping Mall in unusually high temperatures on Monday.
The mall, which is built around an open courtyard, caters to thousands of people from the area.
Police spokeswoman Constable Noloyiso Rwexana confirmed that two people had died in the mall in Khayelitsha but could not give further details.
Pheziswa Mhlanga, a cleaner at the mall, said: “I have never seen a person lose their life in front of me before.
“The man came in leaning on the person he was with, and after he fell we took off the jersey he was wearing because it was hot.”
Mhlanga said she could not say if the unusually hot day - the mercury reached 34°C in the city - had anything to do with the man’s death.
“I don’t know what caused the man’s death. Even though it was hot, he might have had other illnesses which might have caused him to collapse.”
Another employee at the mall, Nkosinathi Magubudela, who attended to the second person who collapsed and died, said the man was still alive when he was alerted to the incident.
“We got a call that a man had collapsed, and when we attended to him he was still alive but died minutes later.
“I was shaking the whole of yesterday (Monday) from seeing a man die in front of me.
“At first I didn’t believe he was dead because he was breathing minutes before.”
He said in the five years he had worked at the mall no one had died there.
Lungile Thethelwa, one of the centre’s managers, said the mall served a large part of Khayelitsha.
“We deal with a lot of people daily, and what we usually have to attend to are people who suffer from epileptic fits. We’ve never had to evacuate a dead person.”
Faizel Sulayman, also with the mall’s management, said two fatalities were reported during the “very hot day” and everybody had been saddened by events.
Cape Argus