POVERTY-STRICKEN FAMILIES LEFT TO DIE

NSALITJE- The news that mealie meal imports have been banned brought tears to Gogo Nhlabatsi.

Nhlabatsi is an 80-year-old elderly woman, who lives in Nsalitje. Her family of seven depends on her elderly grant of E400 for survival.

She uses the grant just to buy mealie-meal. Before the ban imposed by the National Agricultural Marketing Board (NAMBoard) on November 1, she used to buy maize from Pongola in South Africa for only E80-E100 per 25 kilogrammes.
However, for that amount, she can only buy a 20 litre (ligogogo) of mealie meal in the country. The amount she spends to get to Hluti to buy the maize also costs her more than the E20 she spends on the same item when buying from Pongola, South Africa. The return fare from Hluti to Nsalitje is E44.

According to the Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO), maize costs E2.37 per kilogramme in South Africa (E2 373 per tonne) as at November 7. In the country, the organisation said it cost E8.55 per kilogramme.

unpleasant situation

Gogo Mtshali lives with her two children and four grandchildren. None of them is employed. What makes her situation more unpleasant is that the money she spent on buying the mealie meal last Friday was wasted as she had to leave the mealie meal at Nsalitje Border Post after the ban was effected.

She had to borrow E150 so she could send one of her grandchildren to Hluti to buy another bag of maize meal.
Gogo Nhlabatsi said her family ate (ochre) ligusha and the porridge almost on a daily basis. She said the 20 litre bucket would last her family for the next five days, and she had no idea what her family would eat afterwards.
She said they could not cultivate their land to plant maize as the area had little or no rainfall. She said they could not even prepare a small vegetable garden as water was a scarce resource.

“We can afford just one 25 kilogrammes of mealie meal per month. Basically, we just want the children to have food, and then we feed on leftovers,’ she said. She said they sold ligusha just to make money to buy another bag of mealie meal when it gets finished before the end of the month.

Gogo Nhlabatsi’s grandchild, identified as Siyabonga, explained that the advantage of the mealie meal bought from South Africa was that it lasted longer than the one they bought in the country.
She said for a big pot of porridge, they used only three scoops of the container they used to measure their mealie meal. She said for the locally-purchased mealie meal, they had to use six scoops. Siyabonga explained that she used to be employed as a labourer in sugar cane fields in Pongola, but she was later retrenched.

Gogo Nhlabatsi said out of the E400 elderly grant, she managed to withdraw E390, as the rest went to bank charges. She said the trip to withdraw the money cost another E44, which left her with E346 to feed her family. The family also has no livestock, save for one pig they hope to sell for E1 200.

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