Komani residents contributed four-and-a-half tons of food to give relief to the Durban community who were confronted with a shortage as a result of the looting spree in
KwaZulu Natal.
Resident Kaisha Naidoo said the Komani community raised R100, 000 in less than
two days to deliver 300 food hampers to Durban.
The initiative began after one of the community members in Komani contacted her to
find out how they could assist, as they knew Naidoo had family in KZN.
“My husband and I decided to help. I posted on Facebook for people to assist with
food donations.
Deshan Pillay from Sasko contacted me and got Protea Spar manager
Wessel Erasmus to put together hampers.
“People started coming forward to support the initiative. A family donated R10, 000,
but they want to be anonymous.
Businesses, pensioners and friends assisted. This is the lengths people are willing to go to assist others, without needing anything in return.
The grocery hampers which, Naidoo said, were worth about R250 each, were dropped
off at Umkomaas, 50km from Durban to 300 families by her husband and his friends
on Sunday.
“We sent the food to Umkomaas which is a community my husband and I grew up in.
It is a mixed-race community. It was on the news quite a lot because many of their
businesses burned down.
“It is not a very wealthy area. They had not received any food aid and we were the
first to offer help. She said the food parcels only reached the area on Monday, but
there was not enough to sustain them for long.”
Reaching 300 families was quite a success. R109 500 was the total cost of the trip.
After the trip, Naidoo said, more residents from Komani came to offer assistance.
“I had to close off, but there were people who still wanted to support the initiative so
we decided to continue;’’ Naidoo said.
the looting and vandalism when all 130 of their machines were stolen. The received food parcels which were donated by Komani residents on Sunday Picture: SUPPLIED
Meanwhile, Twizza CEO Lisle Clark said the company had a distribution centre in
Durban, which had been ransacked in Cornubia where the stock, two trucks and a
bakkie were looted.
We have 16 employees in commercial and distribution in KZN. We took 1000 tons of
food relief for our staff and their families. Protea Spar owner Abri Erasmus and his
son Wessel gave us a good price and assisted us to package the groceries at very short
notice.
We dropped off the items at Margate, close to where one of our employees lived. It
was picked up from there and taken to Durban on Friday. Local supermarkets were
selling a loaf of bread for R50 which is ridiculous. The team on the ground has been
extremely thankful. We are confident that we will find another depot to move into
shortly and we will get operations up and running in no time.
This view was echoed by Twizza chairman Ken Clark, who said he belonged to an
emergency pilots group and there had been numerous calls for people to move food to
the Durban area.
The food saved the day for a couple of people. It is that thought that counts. We did
not get to see what the streets were like as we were on the runway. From this week the
situation will improve. A lot of trucks will go in, but it is going to be a difficult
situation for some time,” said Clark.
He added that Twizza sourced its sugar for the company from Durban, but so far they
had enough raw materials for the next 30 days. The team was trying to source raw
materials to stock up as soon as possible.
“We want to make sure it is safe for the trucks to run. We have a factory in
Mpumalanga that supplies Durban. We do distributions from the depot to all the
places in Durban. It is not a massive depot, but it affects us.’’
.
