Starving residents near Marikana in North West took to the streets on Monday to protest about councillors diverting food parcels to their friends, relatives and political allies.
Bitou Mayor Peter Lobese is playing with the lives of poor child footballers. In 2017 he publicly gave the local club a R50,000 display cheque. Three years later the kids haven’t yet got a cent, while the municipality has spent plenty on itself.
There was a party mood in the streets of locked-down Alexandra on Sunday afternoon as a convoy of flashy cars gave food parcels to the poor and threw thousands of Rands into the air.
Ask any woman and they will tell you that the hairdressers, nail manicurists and beauty salon owners that usually do a thriving business in the townships are an essential service. So the township beauty industry has now gone underground.
“Starvation and desperation” – that’s what Professor Nick Binedell sees in the community of 40 000 people in Mooiplaas, Pretoria. Binedell says the government relief programmes he has seen excluded foreign nationals.
