Ms Nomsebenzi Wislina Nhlabathi is one of many elderly people in Wesselton who is living below the poverty line.
Displaced and having to live with her nieces and nephews in the Steve Biko informal settlement has robbed her of her dignity and she is whiling the days away until she succumbs to her terminal illness.
After her house burned down in Goedehoop, North West, Ms Nhlabathi had no choice but to ask her relatives to take her in.
They live in a two-room shack in the Steve Biko informal settlement, a newly formed area in Wesselton, where residents survive without basic services such as water, electricity and sanitation.
They survive on government grants, her grant and the disability grant of her nephew.
Ms Nhlabathi has high-blood pressure and it is a mission for her to go for clinic visits every other second month.
“I have to hire a vehicle because I cannot afford to take public transportation with my weak legs,” Ms Nhalabathi said.
She pays R140 to a local driver to take her to the clinic and back, an amount that eats into her pocket.
All Ms Nhlabathi wants is a house to call her own.
“I feel like a burden to my bother’s children and I just want to live the rest of my years in a place I can call my own.”
Ms Nhlabathi also appealed to the public health care system to provide home visits.
“They can use mobile clinics to come and check up on us, because we are really struggling to spend the whole day at a clinic with our failing health.”
However, it is not all doom and gloom as community members and leaders of the informal settlement have rallied around Ms Nhlabathi and the elderly, showing support and checking up on them regularly.
“I do not know where I would have been without the community and my niece and nephew.
“They are all I have, and my faith,” Ms Nhlabathi concluded.
