Page 35 - Rural Voice III - Responding to a Pandemic

ILDA food distribution
COVID-19 created panic, but it also united us. For me, to be safe, those around me should be safe. If I’m in the shopping centre and I’m in a queue, for me to be sure I’m 100% safe, I need to keep a social distance from the next person and that next person needs to socially distance to show she also cares about me. By caring for yourself, you are caring for other people, even people you don’t know.
Food parcels distributed
impacT of covid-19 on The work of The inTer-church local
developmenT agency 60
I always said I’m not going to die of Corona, but I’m going to die of exhaustion, because it created a lot of work. SCAT gave us R10,000 to respond to Corona, and we bought sanitiser, which was very expensive then, and food. We went to the farms to give people food parcels, sanitiser, and pamphlets we developed that explained the lockdown stages. People on the farms were hungry in their stomachs and hungry for information about Corona.
A woman from the community made beautiful three-layered masks for us for R25 each, because we could not be sure that the masks sold at the shops were the right quality. We went from door to door, handing out sanitiser, masks and pamphlets about gender- based violence, measures and controls to prevent and contain Corona, and how to deal with the police and SANDF.
The Police and SANDF were brutal during lockdown. I was in my house helping women to access disaster relief money from SASSA, when a policeman barged in and pointed a gun at my son. I went out and another policeman was pushing my son out of the yard. I said, “Hey, what are you doing? This is his home. Why are you taking him?” When a SANDF soldier drew a gun in my house – in front of my son and my 12-year-old grandson, who was crying – I contacted the Human Rights Commission to report police brutality.
COVID grant funding given to LDA’s
R 50 000
PPE distributed
1900
RURAL VOICE III: RESPONDING TO A PANDEMIC
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