It’s scandalous kids in SA eat sand to survive

NO South African with a heart could have sat down to dinner with a clear conscience last Sunday after reading about starving adults and children – some eating sand to survive – in some parts of KwaZulu-Natal, as reported extensively in a Sunday paper.

This is what is happening in a country where the well-heeled drive Ferraris and Beemers and where some filthy rich socialites wash their hands in expensive alcohol and send photos of this obscene act to their girlfriends. It is scandalous people have to starve in a country with its much vaunted notion of Ubuntu.

Don’t we have such support structures across the provinces of KZN and Eastern Cape anymore, or are we too busy “getting and spending” as Wordsworth once wrote? What has happened to our social workers who graduate each year? Don’t we have village elders, tribal chiefs and kings to keep an eye on things? I may be mistaken but I think traditional leaders are on the government’s payroll. What do they do to earn their stipends?

I will not ask what Dr Patrice Motsepe is doing as he does his fair share, but I will ask what others like Motsepe are doing for their communities so we are not witness to such tragedies as exposed by the reporters.

Finally, we must hold the relevant ministry in government responsible for allowing children to eat sand to survive. The ANC government, its president and all our politicians should hang their heads in shame at this outrage.