It’s hard to believe the numbers of people out on the roads on Saturday mornings, walking, running, cycling and having great family time.
It’s been one of the unexpected positives of lockdown, that we’ve had more time with our spouses and families – and the dogs have never, ever been walked as much before!
There’s been a little nip in the air lately, marking the arrival of autumn or winter, can’t work out which. Hasn’t the sea been perfect! Such a pity to miss out on some great surfing and paddling.
Such a blow that the Ballito Pro has had to be ditched – the whole area will lose out.
I am incensed by KwaDukuza council’s plans to award themselves salary increases, when in the real world we’re losing jobs and businesses, when in the real world there’s a raft of trouble around the corner.
I was going to let rip in this column, but Malcolm Kensett, Neal Robersts and Ann McDonnell have said everything, and better, in their letters on Page 8.
It is such an appalling, callous act by the people who we have entrusted with our tax rands.
Cllr Abdool Dawood of the Al Jamah party challenged councillors and officials to donate to a Covid-19 fund and got nowhere, and it will be no surprise if the petition against the increases circulated on social media last week is also ignored.
I believe this is time for the residents’ association Docrra and our DA ward councillors to take a stand on our behalf.
What I want to address is the many messages and appeals we have received about the beggars on the sides of the roads.
They are not only in Ballito and Salt Rock: on a trip to Stanger along the R102 last week, every speedhump had two or three beggars making mute appeals with praying hands.
People have asked how they can help, others want the police to remove them.
I can sympathise with the police, in that there are simply too many to deal with.
They would have to run a bus service.
As always, there is more than one side to this story and I’ll try to cast some light on what is happening.
There are NGO feeding stations in Shaka’s Head, inland of Ballito/Salt Rock, and Nkobongo, inland of Shakaskraal, properly run and supplied with food by, among others, the Nkobongo Resource Centre and The North Coast Courier Orphan Fund, in turn aided by food and the soup supplied by residents and a number of organisations of Ballito/Salt Rock.
Less so in Groutville, but we’ll come to that.
One worker with an intimate knowledge of the situation told me that food is fairly plentiful in those areas, but even so there are quite a few characters ‘swinging the lead’, if you follow, pleading poverty but actually having their needs seen to at home.
One morning last week, about 11am, one of the regular Salt Rock beggars asked them for a lift back to Nkobongo.
When they asked why he wanted to go home so early, he replied that he’d been there since 9am and had made R300, so he was knocking off for the day!
“They tell you they want money for bread. It’s not for bread, it’s for drugs. There is plenty of soup and bread in Nkobongo,” she said.
“If people feel bad and want to give them something, please give them food only.
They will soon go away if they realise they are not going to get any money.”
Groutville is not the same.
The Reverend Ben Ndaba, a trustee of the Orphan Fund who lives centrally, says the situation is dire.
The ones who are suffering most, he says, are the elderly who have a bunch of children to look after and older people who have lost their jobs due to lockdown.
One of the local councillors did distribute some government food parcels, but they were a drop in the ocean.
Rev Ndaba has also handed out some food parcels bought from donations to the Orphan Fund, and similarly there were far more people than parcels.
So, if you want to help the hungry, may I ask that you donate to the Orphan Fund to enable them to access more food parcels, or buy the masks branded with the Fund’s logo that we have on sale at R20 each.
Buy masks for yourself, your company or for your domestic workers. Details are on the advertisement on this page.
You can also place food in the boxes at these supermarkets: Lifestyle SuperSpar, Pick n Pay and Food Lovers Market in Ballito and Tiffany’s SuperSpar in Salt Rock.
The Fund’s very capable Jane Armstrong and the many who are helping with distribution, will ensure that your money is well spent and the food your money will buy gets to those who most need it.
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