No one should be on the streets and in informal housing without any safety net. In general, but especially not when a pandemic hits the country.

Timbuktu in the Valley has been closely monitoring the developments in the wider neighbourhood, and what we see is of grave concern. The many people without adequate shelter are pushed to the edges of a dignified human existence as the current situation forces them to rely on someone else’s help to survive. It is like a silent war out there and it needs to end.

On top of the Victoria Yards soup kitchen activities which Timbuktu in the Valley has joined in the early days of the lockdown, Lungi and Henry regularly go out to bring bread and soup to the many homeless people in our streets. This has been made possible through the support of our new partner SA Harvest, which is an organisation that redistributes fresh foods let over from major supermarkets in South Africa.

What we see reinforces our mission to break the ongoing cycle of dependency and end the structural inequality so prevalent in South Africa which has been exposed so blatantly in these last months.

Before we can go back to work to close this gap by raising independent people, and until we find a better way to deal with this challenge in a sustainable way, we will share food, groceries and other necessary supplies with those who wouldn’t have otherwise. But our minds are lit how to change the odds so no one must go hungry in a city where food is available in abundance.