VIDEO: UPDATE: Good Samaritans help victims of Marabastad xeno attack
About 200 CBD shack dwellers were left destitute after their homes were set alight by rioters last week.
NGOs, churches and Tshwane metro departments teamed up to help families left destitute following xenophobic violence in the city last week.
“We came together to form the #ServeYourCity movement,” said Daryl Hardy, co-founder of the Dare-To-Love movement.
“The desperate needs of the shack dwellers were met through careful planning and collaboration between donors and the communities on the receiving side.”
These Samaritans held a massive clean-up action, painted walls to beautify the area riddled with foul language and even planted vegetables near the shacks.
Hardy said the garden was part of a longer-term plan to create self-sustainability amongst the shack dwellers.
“Several NGOs also changed an ugly long wall scattered with foul language and graffiti to a newly painted wall, adorned with messages of hope and love.”
Doctors without Borders also provided a multi-disciplinary medical team to assist with trauma, mental health and critical hygiene needs.
About 200 CBD shack dwellers were left destitute after their homes were set alight by rioters last week.
This after xenophobic violence flared up in the Pretoria CBD and rioters fire-bombed several shacks in the area inhabited by foreign nationals.
About 20 shacks in Marabastad destroyed leaving numerous children, women, men, and a few disabled people homeless.
The attackers were alleged to be taxi operators angry at foreign nationals in Boom Street, whom they accused of using nyaope and supporting drug dealers.
Dweller Joyce Sithole said the drug peddlers who used to “hang around” their homes had since disappeared.
She said as foreigners in the squatter camp, they had come to South Africa to work and not to commit a crime.
“We understand we are foreigners; however, we are not drug smokers or dealers. We do not smoke or sell nyoape.”
“A person dealing in drugs would not be as poor as we are and living in conditions such as this.”
“We are staying here because we do not have much,” she said.
Sithole said she understood that the taxi drivers were fighting with drug dealers; however, innocent foreigners were being attacked and being left to suffer even further.
“We are hustlers, yes, but not hustlers for drugs.”
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