"Today my boyfriend has gone out to wash a neighbour's carpet just so he can get R25 for us to eat today. We are both unemployed, we don't get grants, we have nothing."
"Today my boyfriend has gone out to wash a neighbour's carpet just so he can get R25 for us to eat today. We are both unemployed, we don't get grants, we have nothing."
A destitute woman from Extension 6 who lives in appalling conditions expressed gratitude when Congress of the People (Cope) donated a food parcel to her this week through an initiative meant to provide relief to poverty-stricken communities within the Cacadu region.
Daphney Kene, 57, said the last time she'd had a job was in 1988. Kene said while she was grateful for the donation, it would have been better if it had been enough to sustain her for the whole month. Cope also bought her a new door and fixed her electricity connection.
Cope regional constituency manager Mbuleli Njibana told Grocott's Mail they had launched their community service programme in April. Njibana said donations were among the party's efforts to address a number of social challenges faced by impoverished community members.
After the April launch we went on a door-to-door campaign to try and identify challenges that are faced by the people, he said. The most pressing problems, according to Njibana, included housing backlogs, houses destroyed by natural disasters, struggle to obtain identity documents, struggles to access social grants and overwhelming unemployment.
Njibana said they wanted to provide solutions to some of these challenges and to interact with the relevant government departments to resolve the problems faced by the communities within the Cacadu District Municipality.
"We met with the provincial housing department in their Port Elizabeth offices and they said they were aware of the housing backlogs and the challenges faced by people whose houses were destroyed in disasters," Njibana said.
To provide some relief to the struggling families, Cope organised food parcels and used a database obtained through the door-to-door campaign to identify the poorest of families. "We know it's not going to be sustainable, but it will bring some relief to the families," Njibana said.
Cope's plans include approaching Rhodes University to partner with them in programmes that will seek to address poverty at grassroot level, through education in the Grahamstown area.
