"I've never seen such huge rats," Margret Palesa, a resident of Alexandra Township north of Johannesburg, told Anadolu Agency, pointing to the spot behind her house where the rats were hiding.
"They're very dangerous; they once entered my house and nearly ate my toe off at night," she added.
Palesa says she cannot sleep at night because the rats incessantly chew on the iron sheets of the tin house in which she lives with her two children.
"I live in total fear because of these dangerous rats," she lamented. "I'm afraid these rodents might eat my children one day."
Last week, the mother of a six-month toddler in Diepsloot township near Johannesburg told police that her baby had been killed by rats after having been left alone in the house.
"The child's body was badly mutilated," a local witness told AA.
Police spokesman Captain Tsekiso Mofokeng said a pathologist report had indicated that the toddler had died as a result of an attack by rats.
Earlier this year, a local radio station reported that a disabled man had been killed by rats after he passed out in his garden in Alexandra Township.
And last year, a two-month-old infant in Hillbrow, Johannesburg, was disfigured after having been chewed upon by enormous rats.
Pictures published in local newspapers showed that large chunks of the baby's face had been eaten off by the rodents.
-Common-
The monster rats have become common sights in some parts of the Johannesburg Central Business District and in suburbs such as Mayfair, Fordsburg and Rosettenville.
"It's no longer shocking for us to see huge rats running around in our suburb," Abdullahi Mohamed, who has lived in Mayfair for the past five years, told AA.
He blamed the influx of rats on unhygienic residents who dump rotten food and litter on the streets instead of in the rubbish bins provided by the city.
"These evil rats entered into my wardrobe and destroyed my clothes. They have also been eating my groceries," he told AA.
City spokesman Nthatisi Modingoane acknowledges that rats are a major problem in Johannesburg.
He says the city has launched a cleanup campaign aimed at ensuring that residents don't throw litter on the streets, thus making them breeding grounds for rodents.
"We have rubbish bins all over Johannesburg and we encourage residents to only dump their waste in these bins and not on the streets," the spokesman told AA.
The city, he added, would continue working with local residents to ensure that unhygienic practices were eliminated in order to ensure a rodent-free community.
Last year, the city of Johannesburg launched a rodent eradication campaign.
It offered a prize – a free cell phone – to every resident who managed to catch 60 or more rats.
The city also distributed over one hundred cages to households in Alexandra with which to help hunt down the resilient creatures.
By Hassan Isilow
englishnews@aa.com.tr
