Covid-19 and informal settlement communities
On April 15, the first combined patrol operation involving members of the Kathorus SAPS cluster, with the SANDF and EMPD, launched itself in several sections of Katlehong in a bid to enforce the lockdown regulations.
According to Capt Mega Ndobe, 20 people who were found loitering in the streets without any meaningful reason were arrested.
“Many of them could not disclose why they were on the streets and not in their homes. Others were arrested for failing to produce valid permits allowing them to be on the streets and others were just driving around. We urge people to comply with the regulations by remaining indoors,” said Ndobe, who confirmed the operation as ongoing.
Ndobe pointed out that only people who provide essential services were allowed to be on the street during the lockdown. He added that temporarily absolved from the regulations are people who are out to buy food or medication or seeking medical help.
He told Kathorus MAIL the focus of the patrols is to deal with the hundreds of residents who seem to deliberately infringe the lockdown rules.
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“We will be patrolling the entire Katlehong area,” said Ndobe on the day.
Residents in different parts around Kathorus and other townships have since the beginning of the lockdown shown little or no regard for the dangers posed by the spread of Covid-19.
Many residents of informal or low-cost housing settlements say they feel intimidated by the presence of the army because of the high number of residents who, due to circumstances beyond their control, have no alternative but to continue to flout the regulations.
Some fear these are the residents who are going to be potential victims of abuse by some members of the army.
“Many of these people will, without a choice of their own, always find themselves walking the streets for one thing or another. Not because they want to but because they have to due to circumstances they have no means to control or avoid,” explained a vegetable street trader at the Phola Park low-cost housing settlement.”
“I am worried about people who continue to roam the streets aimlessly, unprotected and oblivious of the warnings issued about the dangers of this virus,” said Nonokazi Ngcukana, a single 34-year-old mother of four teenagers from Mandela Park.
According to Ngcukana, it is virtually impossible for her to confine her four children inside the sub-divided 6mx6m shack for the entire family to comply with the lockdown.
Ngcukana told Kathorus MAIL she is aware that she is not alone in her dilemma and that she believes she shares her problems with thousands more.
Like scores of the settlement’s teenage community, the Gcukana siblings seem unperturbed by the potential spread of the virus. For them, like the rest of the children in the neighbourhood, playing with their peers in the streets of the settlement is something they all seem to cherish more than the unseen deadly virus floating in the air.
While keeping young children indoors may be a problem for many parents, there are also those parents who say they have to deal with the trauma and stress brought by the lockdown on their young children.
“My 12-year-old daughter, who is in Grade Seven, has changed and appears apprehensive and scared since the lockdown started. She even refuses to sleep alone in her bedroom,” explained Tryphina Mngomezulu.
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Mngomezulu said her daughter has been reduced from an outgoing and outspoken playful child to a shy and reserved recluse. She said her daughter seem to have lost interest in the things she used to enjoy and love to do.
“I just hope everything will be okay once this lockdown is over,” said the concerned mother.
Lastly, the township’s elderly say all they want is life getting back to normal so they can enjoy what remains of their twilight years.
“It is frustrating that just when most of us are cruising through what are our remaining days of our lives, something like this happens,” said 82-year Vosloorus pensioner Davidson Masomubuka, who welcomed the deployment of the army and other law-enforcement units to enforce the regulations.
Although he said he deeply laments the tragic loss of life in Vosloorus and Alexandra, he urged people to comply with the regulations.
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