Durban - Community members from Chatsworth, just south of the Durban central business district have started making rotis, an Indian flat bread, to feed the sick and elderly in the area who have run out of food supplies after this week’s looting of supermarkets which forced many to close.
This comes after the Nelson Mandela Youth Centre in Chatsworth received pleas from the R.K Khan provincial government hospital and the Aryan Benevolent Home (ABH), that they had no bread to give to patients and residents, the centre’s director Clive Pillay said in a statement on Thursday.
The centre, together with other organisations, bikers and a roti-makers then came together to provide the flat bread as a substitute.
“What an awesome fun day and learning experience it was for all of us as we rolled out and toasted over 500 rotis ... We hope to do this daily with the guarantee of more rotis till the bread delivery situation stabilises,” Pillay said.
Ordinary bread has been in short supply in the aftermath of the looting and vandalism which started off as a protest against the jailing of former president Jacob Zuma for contempt of court, but quickly deteriorated into mass criminality in KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng.
Shopping malls, medical clinics and warehouses, to name a few, were rushed by protesters, looted and set on fire, in what some have called a planned attack to destabilise the country.
The Chatsworth community is not alone in banding together to do good in the midst of the carnage.
The South African National Taxi Council (Santaco) vowed this week to defend shopping malls and clean up the debris left behind by the looting mobs.
“It was great seeing the community come out in numbers to join. Let's rebuild our beautiful South Africa!” Santaco KZN spokesperson Siyanda Ntenga said in a statement on Wednesday.
Santaco members also went to clean up taxi ranks in hopes of soon resuming their stalled business of ferrying commuters.
African News Agency (ANA)