Cape Town -
Gangs of “marauding youth” are terrorising elderly people across Cape Town, a report released by the Department of Social Development on Wednesday reveals.
“We will not die of sickness or old age, but by our children,” was a sentiment frequently expressed in the report.
The report was based on the responses of 151 people from 10 wards across the Cape.
The report was referred to during a lunch for 1 500 elderly people hosted by Social Development Minister Bathabile Dlamini and the South African Social Security Agency in Nyanga on Wednesday.
The elderly said they “feel terrorised by marauding gangs of youth who don’t sleep at night and run across their yards, jumping fences and fighting each other”, the report reads.
Tryphina Zingena, 76, said she felt threatened by the young people near her home in Gugulethu. “People are not working, so they are robbing us,” she said. “We don’t sleep well because they are up and down until 3am.”
Her R1 000 pension grant was too little to buy food for the month. “It is gone as soon as you get it because you borrowed the month before.”
Another Gugulethu resident, 84-year-old Ebba Mdlalane, said: “In the daytime they force the doors open and steal our TVs. It’s young people. They target old people.”
The elderly were also angry about having to share queues with young mothers on the day grants are paid out. They reported “harassment” from young mothers at the pay points, to the extent that “some had fallen when pushed and broke their limbs”.
Some complained about having to travel to Gugulethu to collect grant payments. They had to “risk being mugged, queue in either hot, rainy or cold conditions and bring crates to sit on as there are no chairs at venues”.
Elderly people who did not have toilets in their homes often had to use toilets that were unsuitable for the frail or sickly.
Dlamini said residents also didn’t understand the disorders that affected the elderly, such as Alzheimer’s.
Elderly people wandering around in their underwear or pyjamas were ridiculed or branded a witch instead of being taken care of.
Cape Argus