Women hit back at government for interfering with their soup kitchens

1000Women1Voice has written to executive director of the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN Women) Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka complaining about the department of social development’s proposal to control and accredit soup kitchens.

Founding member of the women’s organisation Tina Thiart claimed many women’s organisations had started soup kitchens, mobilised funding, solicited food donations, recruited volunteers, and already served thousands of meals to vulnerable communities.

“The department now proposes to control, manage and determine who can run a soup kitchen. It wants to centralise donations.

“We say, no. Keep your hands off our soup kitchens.”

Thiart asked South Africans to join the protest by signing and sharing a petition to UN Women. It had nearly 5,800 signatures by noon yesterday.

In a statement, Social Development Minister Lindiwe Zulu said the Nonprofit Organisations Act, of which the department was a custodian, stated the department must ensure access to food security for the poor.

“But to comply with social distancing guidelines, the department has changed its modus operandi of serving cooked food at community centres to the door-to-door delivery or knock-and-drop system of pre-packed food.

“However, over the past [few] weeks, the department has recognised and has been informed of several incidents of long queues and overcrowding at food-parcel distribution areas.

“Protecting our people against the possible infection of this deadly virus is as important as providing food relief [so] the department drafted directives on coordination of food donations and other humanitarian relief efforts.

“Humanitarian responses to a crisis of this magnitude often involve large numbers of organisations [and] failure to work together can lead to gaps in coverage and duplication,” Zulu said.

“It is for this reason we encourage organisations who are involved in humanitarian assistance to work jointly with the government to ensure there is a coordinated response and to eliminate opportunities for corruption and manipulation of these efforts.”

– news@citizen.co.za

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