The Krugersdorp-based shelter Cradle of Hope is taking the astounding step of taking the government to court to win back the right to hand out food to hungry South Africans.
It’s a sign of how the lockdown regulations, which started with the sound intention of reducing Covid-19 infections, have morphed into something farcical in the hands of petty or power-drunk officials.
"It’s not about the Cradle of Hope — the country is facing a humanitarian crisis, and we’re being prevented from feeding starving people, including children, who come to us every day looking for food," CEO Melodie van Brakel told the FM.
Though the shelter was set up 11 years ago for vulnerable women and children, for the past four years it has also been providing sandwiches for a growing number of people, including the homeless. Since the lockdown, that has swollen to 600 people a day — until the lockdown regulations said she had to stop.
Now Van Brakel says she’s briefed lawyers, and hopes to get to court within two weeks to get an order allowing her to continue feeding starving people.
"Everyone, from the Gauteng premier to the police commissioner, has ignored us, so we have to go to court. We can bring rapid relief to this community, but we’ve been stopped by these ridiculous regulations which weren’t even promulgated, they were just imposed on us," she says. Ideally, she’d want other non-profit organisations (NPOs) to join her legal bid.
Her problem began on May 7 when she applied for a permit to provide food parcels to community people suffering during the lockdown. The permit she was given said she could only provide food parcels of nonperishable items, which preferably had to be delivered. She tried to speak to the social development department’s West Rand director Ndo Kobeli, who’d signed her permit, but she was told flatly, on May 11, she wasn’t allowed to hand out sandwiches.
"The thing was, people were still coming to us every day asking for food — we even got death threats from two of them who said we didn’t want to feed them any more, which wasn’t true," she says.
Frustrated, Van Brakel hung a sign on red cardboard on the shelter’s gate. It read: "The ANC government has forced us to stop feeding you. Please go to the DSD office at 16 Human Street to ask for food assistance, attention: Mrs Ndo Kobeli."
"Then all hell broke loose," she says. First, the police arrived the next day prepared, she believes, to arrest her, if she handed out food.
"Then a representative arrived from the ANC Youth League who told me [his organisation] was going to bus in supporters to riot unless I took the sign down. He said it was provocative, and I told him, ‘good, I want it to be provocative,’" she says. The riot never happened, but nor did any breakthrough on feeding the community.
Last Thursday, the Cradle of Hope’s lawyers sent a letter to Gauteng premier David Makhura, asking him to withdraw the "guidelines" and tell the police and other law enforcement "not to interfere with, or prohibit charity organisations" from distributing food to people in need. Van Brakel says she’s had no response.
While Kobeli said she "could not comment", Thabiso Hlongwane, spokesperson for Gauteng’s acting social development MEC, Panyaza Lesufi, told the FM that the Cradle of Hope wasn’t approaching this issue the right way. "They are helping us feed our people, but we gave them a permit to distribute food parcels. Under the Covid-19 regulations, they’re not allowed to distribute cooked food," he says.
But a sandwich would hardly constitute "cooked food", surely?
Hlongwane responds: "If it’s a sandwich, why can’t they deliver it to their homes?
"We can’t have people queuing outside during Covid."
Van Brakel’s answer is that a large number of those she feeds are homeless, and for her to drive to an area with food for some, but not others, could spark a riot.
Hlongwane responds: "If they’re homeless, they should report to the department of social development, because we’ve taken 5,800 homeless people and put them in shelters during Covid, where they’re getting three meals a day."
Though this case is likely to be decided on the legal technicalities of the lockdown regulations, it will look bad for the government.
Van Brakel started the shelter in 2007 after a life-threatening illness, and an incident where a family member was gang-raped on a beach during a church camp, forced her to re-evaluate her priorities. She says: "Until then I was a privileged, very materialistic person. But my eyes opened to the plight of women who were raped. So I bought that large property in Krugersdorp as a house for women living in abusive circumstances, and we have helped hundreds of women and their children since."
This case also highlights the precarious circumstances in which SA’s 228,500 registered NPOs work. Already, donations that would usually have gone to these organisations are being redirected to the Solidarity Fund, which has raised R2.2bn.
At the end of April, the leaders of five NGOs — including Rare Diseases SA CEO Kelly du Plessis, Afrika Tikkun’s Marc Lubner and the Smile Foundation’s Hedley Lewis — wrote to President Cyril Ramaphosa, asking him to set up a "war room" to help their sector survive. They warned that a million people employed by the sector could lose their jobs too.
"If [the NPO sector] ceases to exist, we will no longer be able to partner with government to serve the millions of South Africans who so desperately need our support," they wrote.
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