The disgrace of fire donations one year later

My sincerest apologies to OneKnysna#Ok (One Knysna), to Sam Lurie, to Jill Morse and everyone of your group who have toiled and agonised over the fire donations that came into Knysna almost a year ago.

This is exactly what happened this week. On Monday 16 April a person told me that she had heard free clothes were to be given out at the large premises at Woodmill Walk where fire donations have been piled up since last year.

She said she and some of her friends, not fire victims, were going to be “shopping”. I use this expression because choosing what you like and taking it is a form of shopping, although in this case it did not entail payment.

Bunfight at Woodmill Walk

Later I happened to pass Woodmill Walk and noticed what looked like a bunfight, with people walking out of the passage with black bags full of clothes and other people jostling at the opened grid of the shop/warehouse.

I took a video of a fire victim with his papers certifying his status, who expressed outrage at the fact that non-fire victims were getting clothes while he wasn’t able to get anything. Jill Morse of the Knysna Disaster Fund was also caught on camera explaining that not all the clothes were fit for even her to wear and that it was these clothes that were available to everybody.

The full story by Stefan Goosen is in this week’s paper about how this donation process was actually meant to work. To see the video look on www.knysnaplettherald.com.

Fed-up with this story

In the meantime I confess I allowed my feelings to surface in the narrating of the video and this is not what a good journalist does, but I am so thoroughly and utterly sick of this story and the way these donations have been shunted around and handled from day one.

The whole donation story has been an absolute debacle since June 2017 when goods flooded into Knysna from all over South Africa. There was, even then, no systematic way of distributing these donations and this was evident because the stuffed-to-the-hilt depot set up in Spring Street, where our offices are, was like a Black Friday spree some days. It is a fact that not only fire victims were given clothes - everybody knows this.

The municipality took no responsibility, we were inundated with questions about these donations and unable to answer them.

The Woodmill Walk saga is in Stefan Goosen’s story this week, but the hiccups up until now have been farcical.

If but for Morse’s dedication, Lurie and the group’s absolute persistence, these donations may actually even have left Knysna, but this group has now assumed responsibility for the mammoth task of getting these clothes to people who need them.

In the weeks to come we will report on these donations and One Knysna.

To all those who have laboured to help disseminate clothes, I do not mean to be disrespectful or demean your efforts.

It is a disgrace and a slap in the face to everybody who gave from their hearts to Knysna that these donations are still unaccounted for, have never been properly audited, that people have not been thanked – all issues that One Knysna has taken on board.

Thank God for this group. And the municipality, who should have stepped up to this plate, should be ashamed of themselves.