Socio-economic pressures are mounting in South Africa’s poorest communities as the restrictive lockdown measures intended to flatten the curve of Covid-19 infections leave households hungry and desperate.
Under the headline, ‘Hunger in a time of protests, looting: ‘People are looking all over for food‘, News24 reported: ‘A day of stone throwing and looting in some parts of Cape Town could explain how some people are battling to find food during the lockdown, a Cape Town councillor on the Cape Flats said on Wednesday.
‘”A man told me ‘I would rather die of Covid-19 than of hunger’,” ANC Ward 22 councillor Bongani Ngcani said. “People are looking all over for food. …This thing caught everybody by surprise. Now that everybody is at home all day, they have no food left.’
The IRR is urging the government to alter its approach to the lockdown with a view to simultaneously saving lives and livelihoods, suggesting among several core proposals scrapping the distinction between essential and non-essential business to allow any business that can function without posing a serious risk to public health to do so.
The IRR has warned that failure to amend the lockdown restrictions risks triggering a humanitarian crisis in the country, spurred by a rapid growth in unemployment, and levels of socio-economic desperation that risk placing legitimate and necessary anti-coronavirus measures in jeopardy.
Rising desperation among the poor comes as the Covid-19 death toll rose by seven, to 34, and the number of positive cases by 91, to 2 506.
Law and order efforts to compel people to abide by the lockdown regulations – including bans on liquor and the sale of cigarettes, widely considered needlessly draconian and unhelpful – have been undermined by brutish behaviour, and the alleged involvement of police themselves in illegal liquor trading.
Seven police officers, who allegedly staged a burglary at a liquor outlet in Bonnievale, were granted bail of R5 000 each after appearing in the Swellendam Magistrate’s Court on Tuesday. The two sergeants and five constables appeared on charges of defeating the ends of justice, theft, the unauthorised use of a state vehicle and dealing in liquor in contravention of the Disaster Management Act.
The primary anxiety in the poorest communities, however, is food.
Western Cape Community Safety MEC Albert Fritz condemned the looting of shops in the province, adding: ‘At present, we find ourselves facing a humanitarian crisis because of the lockdown and economic challenges that follow are only going to exacerbate these challenges further. It is a struggle for many to put food on the table.’
GroundUp reported that social justice, education and children’s rights activist groups were calling on the Minister of Basic Education to act swiftly to restore school feeding schemes during the lockdown. It said that in a joint letter to Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga, Equal Education, the Equal Education Law Centre, SECTION27, the Centre for Child Law, and the Children’s Institute hade made suggestions on how an estimated nine million vulnerable children could continue to access the National School Nutrition Programme (NSNP). The organisations said the minister’s response so far had been ‘disappointing’ and ‘untenable’.
In the Western Cape, the provincial government vowed to go ahead with its National Food Nutrition Programme (NFNP) – which has been feeding 100 000 children a day – despite opposition from the ANC-aligned South African Democratic Teachers Union (Sadtu), Cosatu, and minor political party, the Independent Civic Organisation of SA.
In other virus-related news
• Confirmed cases of the virus passed two million yesterday, according to Johns Hopkins university;
• India’s nationwide coronavirus lockdown, the biggest in the world, would be extended until at least 3 May, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said. India has around 10 000 cases, with 339 deaths so far;
• US President Donald Trump was heavily criticised for stopping the US’s $400 million-a-year funding for the World Health Organization (WHO). Philanthropist Bill Gates, the second biggest WHO funder, said it was ‘as dangerous as it sounds’. Trump accused WHO of ‘severely mismanaging and covering up the spread of the coronavirus’. There are almost 620 000 confirmed cases in the US, and 133 261 deaths;
• The BBC reported that the pandemic had led to the ‘biggest-ever drop’ in US retail sales in March;
• Retired shopworker, 106-year-old great-grandmother Connie Titchen, thought to be the oldest patient to recover from Covid-19, was applauded by staff as she left Birmingham’s City Hospital this week after three weeks in hospital; and
• The Tour de France has been moved to late August.