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A day of stone throwing and looting in parts of Cape Town could explain how some people are struggling to find food during the shutdown, a Cape Town councilor at Cape Flats said on Wednesday.
“A man said to me, ‘I’d rather die of Covid-19 than starvation,'” ANC Ward 22 councilor Bongani Ngcani told News24. “People are looking for food everywhere.”
A portion of Tafelsig in Mitchells Plain falls within its neighborhood.
Ngcani spent Wednesday morning in a meeting with a group of people to understand why people threw stones and blocked AZ Berman Drive in Tafelsig on Tuesday, and why stores broke into Gatesville and Manenberg.
He said it was simply food: having none and waiting for the food packages to be delivered.
“This surprised everyone. Now that everyone is home all day, they have no food left.”
Essential services
Due to the closure, only essential service workers can work, and the streets, which are normally full of small businesses and street vendors, are silent. The police patrol the streets and order the people who remain at their gates to enter.
Everyone except essential services workers were home, Ngcani said, and their closets were bare.
Remember, these are people who are already poor. “
He added that the protest in Tafelsig on Tuesday appeared to be sparked by three food baskets that were left at homes in the area.
Equally desperate neighbors saw this and wanted to know where their food baskets were.
“People were angry,” said Ngcani.
The situation escalated and police, police and metropolitan police units were called in to calm the situation, with rubber bullets exploding as residents threw stones at the units.
Ngcani said the Western Cape government announced that it had set aside R53 million for emergency food supplies, but that it had not yet reached residents.
Food packages
According to a provincial statement by the Department of Social Development, 50,000 food packages would last for a month in designated homes, and that children, who generally ate at schools or daycare centers, would still get food.
Ngcani had prepared 30 food baskets from his neighborhood fund allocation, which consisted of cornmeal and other staples, and distributed 10 each in three different parts of his neighborhood, but this was not close to what was needed. .
At the meeting to discuss Tuesday’s protest in Mitchells Plain, it emerged in a small pocket of that constituency, 500 people are already starving.
READ | The Western Cape government reserves additional R53m for feeding schemes to help the poor and sick
“They said that their SA Social Security (Sassa) grant doesn’t even last a week,” said Ngcani.
Residents who attended a briefing on Wednesday said that even if they followed the process of obtaining food packages, it would take a long time to reach them.
They added that they also did not have money for airtime or data to obtain their names in a database.
Call Sassa to reopen offices
The department said Tuesday’s riots showed a need for clarity on food packages, and also asked Sassa to reopen its offices, which closed on March 30.
This means that people cannot go to their offices for help as they normally would. Sassa’s services were suspended until April 16, which is when the original shutdown was due to end.
However, the blockade has been extended until the end of April.
Sassa has asked people in need to call the toll-free number, 0800 60 10 11, the PostBank call center number 0800 53 5455 or email: [email protected] for any grant-related inquiries.
News24 has asked the national department for comments on how many people have ordered food, and this will be added when received.
Meanwhile, the Western Cape Department of Social Development said that while it had nothing to do with the distribution of food packages in Tafelsig, the protests showed frustration and despair among the people.
“It also indicates that there is persistent misinformation that has circulated about food packages,” he added.
Food packages
The qualifying criteria for your food packages include households affected by Covid-19 infections, such as in a household where a family member has tested positive for Covid-19 and cannot maintain itself because of that.
Another criterion is whether a person who is taking medication or suffers from a chronic illness and does not have sufficient means to support himself. Another criterion is whether a person and their household do not have sufficient means to support themselves during the period of confinement that was referred by a registered humanitarian aid agency, a registered NPO or a municipal administrator.
A person living in the Western Cape can apply by contacting a municipal call center, a municipal administrator, a humanitarian aid agency, or a registered NPO that routes social workers.
The information given to one of them is then added to a central database, followed by a telephone assessment conducted by one of the social workers, and the person’s identification is checked in the Sassa database to verify if the person is an existing grant or recipient of food.
Once it is confirmed that a potential beneficiary meets the criteria, the department contacts them and provides them with details on when the delivery will take place.
Anyone who wants to donate food in the province can contact [email protected].
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