Cape Town – With 25 years’ experience in the non-profit sector, Cape Flats activist Joanie Fredericks believes it was ’’inhumane’’ of award-winning singer Makhadzi to ask people to motivate why they ’’deserve’’ a R500 food voucher.
On her Facebook page, the 25-year-old award-winning singer and songwriter, born Ndivhudzannyi Ralivhona, said: ’’I started this give-away without knowing that people will tell this (sic) hurtful stories.’’
Best known for her hits Tshanda Vhuya and Matorokisi, she announced on Facebook yesterday that she had given R500 food vouchers to ’’five lucky winners’’ and donated money for someone’s university fees. On Twitter, she said two ’’deserving’’ people would be awarded R500 food vouchers.
“I wish I had enough money,’’ the Johannesburg-based singer added on Facebook. ’’Today I decided to give you this song titled Zwivhuya on YouTube. It will be available on iTunes on Friday.’’
There are people that really need this R500 food voucher . If you know that you don't deserve it please don't be greedy and let those who desperately need food comment and participate . @MakhadziSA please make sure that this money goes to those who need t for real. #Tchukutsha pic.twitter.com/p1A2LQ0Rf7
— #LinkInBio (@IMatterthereal) August 31, 2021
’’If you look in someone’s eyes who is standing in a food queue, day after day with no hope in sight, it’s absolutely painful for that person. I am very thankful there is another person who wants to help, but she must really think more about the best way to go about being impactful,’’ said the Tafelsig Community Action Network’s Fredericks, who aside from feeding Cape Flats communities heavily affected by the Covid-19 lockdown, has founded Ladies Own Transport Services, a driving school – to better enable women to get a job and protect them from the unwanted advances of their instructors– and launched a food garden box project called “One Household, One Garden” this year.
’’Makhadzi should rather have reached out to those feeding schemes, soup kitchens and NGOs in her immediate vicinity and boosted them so they they can continue doing what they have been doing the last 18 months.
’’Otherwise this seems as if this is all about making a name for herself and mainly a PR exercise. Because if she really cared about the community, then she would have acknowledged the many thousands of people, grandmothers and grandfathers, people who have used their grant money to feed people over the last 18 months.
’’Frankly, as someone who is in the community, a new R500 voucher to who and what? The issue here is that it is inhumane to ask someone to qualify why they need a R500 voucher more than their neighbour because we are all in this together. I wish there was a time when somebody could just come and say, ’South Africa, there is a R500 voucher for each and everyone of you’.
’’This is one of the reasons why I refuse to hand out hampers because if there is not enough hampers for everyone in the community, then we shouldn’t only take a few for some.
The first time I entered to my house I took this picture. My dream came true and I am proud of my self. I built my grandmother a house 🏡 just because my mom and father separated I decided to not choose but to built them two different houses.
— Makhadzi (@MakhadziSA) August 19, 2021
Now I bought MY OWN HOUSE! pic.twitter.com/yYq8bMNWjL
’’Unfortunately, the number of people going hungry is increasing, because people who never thought they would lose their job are all at home now. So I am continuing to feed as many as I can, but obviously donor fatigue is a real issue and also the financial situation of the donors themselves.’’
One of the posts of someone desperate for a food voucher on Makhadzis page read: ’’I deserve the R500 food voucher because I am at college, and my parents hardly give me money for groceries because at home we're not financially stable.
’’I sometimes sleep without eating because I don't have money to buy food. I deserve the R500 food voucher to avoid going on sleeping around with big men in order to get some money for food.’’
Another post read: ’’I wish to win this because sleeping on an empty stomach is one thing that I do most of the days and staying at a place where I can’t even go ask next door for food. Life is not easy at all these days. I’m even ashamed when people ask me why I’m losing weight and I always say I’m on diet but honestly I’m not... I’m just hungry. The voucher will be a great help.’’
Makhadzi clearly does have a ’’giving’’ nature, however, having built a house for her grandmother, one for her mother and another for her father (her mother raised her three children on her own after the couple divorced).
IOL