STATEMENT BY BRETT HERRON, GOOD MEMBER OF THE WESTERN CAPE PROVINCIAL PARLIAMENT AND SECRETARY-GENERAL
COVID19 – FOOD CRISIS
THE WESTERN CAPE GOVERNMENT SHOULD ACT NOW AND STOP ELECTED OFFICIALS ACCESS TO GOVERNMENT FOOD RELIEF
NO PERSON SHOULD BE REFUSED FOOD DUE TO THEIR POLITICAL AFFILIATION
23 April 2020
Speaker,
The corona virus has presented challenges that we never envisaged, and posed questions to which we don’t have all the answers.
But we do know that unprecedented crises require unprecedented responses: Business as usual is consigned to the trash heap, and an urgent demand arises for leadership that is pragmatic, informed, agile, fair and compassionate.
The most critical factor for our fundamentally unequal society entering lockdown was the ability to feed the most vulnerable people.
But, while families were starving at home, and a food crisis was emerging, we had a government more concerned with access to cigarettes.
On the 2nd of April I wrote to the Premier and to Ministers Maynier, Meyer and Fritz alerting them to three food crises: access to fresh food markets, informal food trading, and food relief. My letters were ignored.
On the 6 April I again asked the Premier to address the critical scarcity of food in poor communities. This letter was also ignored.
Farming was declared an essential service, but small scale farmers lost access to fresh food markets because these were inexplicably shut down – although they could have practised the same social distancing and hygiene controls that supermarkets do.
The penetration of supermarkets in low-income areas is insufficient, with many families buying fresh food from informal traders. But informal trading was shut down, and when the regulations were changed the Western Cape dragged its feet to comply.
Given the role of informal trading in providing livelihoods and food I expected the Premier and Minister Maynier to jump in. But they didn’t.
Food relief is now the subject of scrutiny across the country, and it comes as no surprise that we are receiving reports of the manipulation of government food relief – with councillors using access to food for political purposes.
Yesterday, during the Covid-19 ad hoc committee meeting, I shared a voice note from elderly residents in District Six being denied access to food assistance because “they are not DA”. Elsewhere in the country, people are prejudiced because “they are not ANC”.
I repeat my appeal to the Premier to ensure that politicians are not involved in the access to government food relief in anyway whatsoever.
I also urge this government to assist informal traders to get back to trading; and to work to resolve access to markets for small scale farming.