Service clubs snookered
Rotarian Donald Goldfain was seething with anger when he arrived at the George railway station and found that the George Municipality was handing out soup from the place where Rotary was supposed to put up its soup kitchen. For the last six years the different George service clubs have each been assigned a day on which they distribute soup and bread to the clients that visit the Phelophepha mobile healthcare train for specialised medical treatment.
Goldfain and his fellow Rotarians, whose mission statement is 'Service Above Self', arrived at the railway station on Tuesday 12 September with 160 litres of thick tasty soup and food parcels for the hundreds of clients who had been queuing for hours to visit one of the five clinics on the train.
Goldfain confronted Mercia Draghoender, portfolio councillor for Community Development, on the station’s platform asking why the municipality had put up a soup kitchen when Rotary was supposed to be serving soup that day. The journalist heard Draghoender respond, "It is my department and my responsibility and I will decide which days we will be here to do the soup kitchen. Put up your soup kitchen next to mine. I don’t see why we should be bad friends over a cup of soup."
Fellow Rotarian Di Kershaw told the George Herald, "The municipality says there is no money and constantly appeals to the public for assistance. Now they waste money by spending our taxes on something we have already paid for. It is a travesty of justice and I hope council takes note of what has happened here today."
The food was given to other organisations who distributed it.
Draghoender told the George Herald that she received an e-mail on Friday evening from Goldfain saying that the Rotarians do not need the mayor’s help with the soup kitchen. She regarded this as extremely arrogant. “This is the first time that my tenure as portfolio councillor of Community Development coincides with the arrival of the train in George. We are the face of the poor and have to be seen to care. Rotary and the municipality could have taken turns supplying soup.”
Told that she is accused of wasting taxpayers’ money, Draghoender hit back: “I wonder where the Rotarians get their funds? They are also reliant on taxpayers’ money. I secured donations of bread and soup bones and the other basics used we had in stock. Why can’t we just take hands? The tone of his e-mail to me was completely out of line.”