Gift of the Givers, a beacon of hope for the hungry children of Eastern Cape amidst government failure – Corene Conradie

"Tis the season to be jolly" as the Xmas song goes, but while we stock our fridges to the brim and buy mountains of gifts, there are children in the Eastern Cape of South Africa, who don’t have food. Corene Conradie, the Eastern Cape Coordinator of Gift of the Givers told Biznews that 80% of people in the Eastern Cape lived in poverty and below the breadline. Conradie said many of the families are child-led households with no parents. She said the child grant of R550 that families receive does not keep up with inflation and mothers said it was often only enough to buy two weeks of food. Despite this desperate need, the Eastern Cape Department of Social Development returned R67 million of the R100 million allocated to them by the central government in 2022. Conradie says it was an absolute failure to the poor in the province where a desperate mother in Butterworth murdered her starving children and took her own life. As has happened so many times during crises when the South African government has been slow to act, Gift of the Givers has stepped in with food trucks. Conradie says, “You can see the joy, dignity, and hope restored in the mother’s eyes.”