Community unites to help pensioner
Community members came to the aid of a sickly pensioner in Jouberton, North West, recently, helping transform her poor living conditions into a cleaner, brighter place for her.
Sophie Ntshetshe, 71, had struggled for years with only her asthmatic unemployed son to fend for her but relief came when the residents, led by members of the ANC Youth League, descended on her home in Extension 6 and extended a bit of ubuntu.
The community members cleaned the house and garden as an initiative for Mandela Day.
The garden had overgrown grass and trees. The house had no running water and bad electrical connections. The geyser had not worked for years. There was a fire in the house a few years ago, which had destroyed parts of it, and Sophie did not have money to repair the ceiling. The walls and ceiling were black because of fire damage.
Sophie’s son Mpho Ntshetshe is now 42. He has no steady job and relies on piece jobs, she told the community members. Sophie said that she is too weak to take care of the house and that her son sometimes gets asthma attacks. “When he gets the attacks we struggle to get him to hospital because of lack of transport,” said Sophie.
The community washed windows, curtains and clothing. They also mopped floors and cut the overgrown grass and trees.
Councillor of Ward 8, Mojalefa Nthaba told OurHealth: “I will get somebody from the municipality to fix the electricity and water problem.”
Selloane Pholo, a member of the Youth League said they “identify poor homes in the community and then we clean, offer food parcels and register the households on indigent grants. Once registered for the grant the household will get help from the local municipality.”
There were only a few old pots and plates in Sophie’s kitchen. The ward councillor was “shocked” at what he saw in the kitchen. “This is bad. These pots are not suitable for cooking and looking at the stove it looks like no cooking takes place in this kitchen. What does granny Sophie eat? An old woman cannot drink medication on an empty stomach. Sophie must at least have some porridge to eat in the morning,” said Nthaba.
Sophie’s younger sister Maria Ntshetshe said she comes to the house from time to time to help out. “I am very happy to see the community also helping out,” she said.
Sophie thanked community members for helping her. “I am very happy. May God bless them,” she said.
Author
Republish this article
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Unless otherwise noted, you can republish our articles for free under a Creative Commons license. Here’s what you need to know:
-
You have to credit Health-e News. In the byline, we prefer “Author Name, Publication.” At the top of the text of your story, include a line that reads: “This story was originally published by Health-e News.” You must link the word “Health-e News” to the original URL of the story.
-
You must include all of the links from our story, including our newsletter sign up link.
-
If you use canonical metadata, please use the Health-e News URL. For more information about canonical metadata, click here.
-
You can’t edit our material, except to reflect relative changes in time, location and editorial style. (For example, “yesterday” can be changed to “last week”)
-
You have no rights to sell, license, syndicate, or otherwise represent yourself as the authorized owner of our material to any third parties. This means that you cannot actively publish or submit our work for syndication to third party platforms or apps like Apple News or Google News. Health-e News understands that publishers cannot fully control when certain third parties automatically summarise or crawl content from publishers’ own sites.
-
You can’t republish our material wholesale, or automatically; you need to select stories to be republished individually.
-
If you share republished stories on social media, we’d appreciate being tagged in your posts. You can find us on Twitter @HealthENews, Instagram @healthenews, and Facebook Health-e News Service.
You can grab HTML code for our stories easily. Click on the Creative Commons logo on our stories. You’ll find it with the other share buttons.
If you have any other questions, contact info@health-e.org.za.
Community unites to help pensioner
by itumelengtau, Health-e News
August 7, 2015
Related
Soweto community marches against drug abuse
The Orlando Community Policing Forum (CPF) recently held its regular anti-drug march through the neighbourhood’s streets following allegations that local drug users were behind the theft of new school tablets in the area.
What’s for lunch?
Junk food and sugary drinks are fuelling obesity epidemics among school kids worldwide, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO). Packed lunches can help kids stave off extra pounds but only about half of South African school kids take lunch to school, many parents may be wondering what’s for lunch.
Outdoor gyms: Get a move on in Joburg
From London to Diepsloot, the number of outdoor gyms in city parks in on the rise. We look at how Soweto’s latest outdoor gym in Phiri Park is helping get South Africans moving.