By Sinothile Zondi, Durban intern
I live in Effigham, a suburb of Durban North, with my sister. We each have a young child. During the lockdown we have both been working from home. My suburb consists of mostly formal housing, with some shacks on the outskirts. Shack dwellers come into the suburb for shopping and work. There is quite a large population of foreign nationals who are entrepreneurs. Most of the locals are friendly towards them.
With the lockdown it was hard to shop as there are not many shops in the area. One day I was walking to buy bread and was stopped by a policeman who asked why I was walking so far from home. Generally to go shopping I have to take a taxi to central Durban which takes about 40 minutes or more. Last week I had to explain to a taxi driver that he was not allowed to carry a full load of passengers. There were 15 people in the taxi so I decided to get out. The passengers were wearing masks but the driver wore his around his neck. They only seem to put the mask on when they see the police. There was no sanitiser available when boarding the taxi and I used my own.
There is a clinic and a community feeding scheme at the library, which operates of a container. People go and collect bread and food. I have seen the council handing out food parcels. Once when I was going to buy bread during Level 5 they called informal residents to the container. No one wore masks and there were no hand sanitisers. Over 50 people were crowding around with their children and fighting over the food and it was chaos, with no social distancing being observed.
I feel unsafe in my community because of this behaviour. I try to go out as seldom as possible. I don’t know if there are any infections in my community. Testing in the area has been announced but I don’t know if any testing has been done.
The stores where we shop do observe the regulations. They provide sanitisers, keep numbers down and insist on people wearing masks. The local church has been handing out food parcels door to door which is very encouraging. There is a problem of hunger in the area but homelessness is not very obvious here. Most homeless people shelter in town. The problems are mostly in the informal settlements where there is a lack of water and formal toilets.
