Families ’ struggle continues day and night outside Sassa
Journalism is not a nine to five job. I was reminded of this last week when I took a call well after 6pm from people who said they were sleeping outside the offices of the South African Social Services Agency (Sassa) in East London’s CBD.
They demanded that I meet them to take their photographs and write their story. “Write and tell our story of how we suffer with our infants at our backs. We’re sleeping on cold slabs as we are queuing for social grant applications,” the caller said.
Some had been doing this for the past three weeks. All they wanted was for their story to appear in the paper the next morning.
As journalists, we are sometimes mistaken by the greater community as authorities. If there are no services from government departments, frustrated people come to us for help.
I promised to drive by on my way home.
I received two more calls — including one from Buffalo City Metro security guards who witness the Sassa problems every day as they work next door to the Sassa offices — to inform the Dispatch that about 20 of those waiting outside the Sassa office had been take by law-enforcement officers to Fleet Street police station.
I spent the next two hours of that cold, windy night with the Sassa applicants. They had their blankets and camp chairs, prepared for a long wait. When I realised that some were there with small children, I realised that their plight was serious.
Despite feeling tired after almost 12 hours of work, I felt energised when I perceived that their fight was real.
They did not personally know me or photographer Michael Pinyana but our presence was what they wanted.
They didn’t have anyone to share their story with, but had been advised that the Dispatch would listen to them.
These people wanted police not to harass them at night while they queued outside the offices. They wanted Sassa to accommodate more applicants instead of just 50 a day. They wanted Sassa officials to make sure that they made provision for those who came from farflung areas to be given priority instead of being turned away.
Their call was one we could not ignore; their story was one that exposed all the contradictions of the lockdown — the extent to which the new distancing regulations placed yet more burdens on some of the most vulnerable in our society.
They felt their experience merited the front page and they were right. Their story cried out to be told and we told it, holding a mirror to our society.
We ourselves can be guilty of not paying enough attention to the people on the ground, not through any malicious intent, but because in any given day there are any number of topics that need to be covered.
We do need to report on government policies, but the consequences of those policies are felt most by SA’s poorest citizens. These are the voices that deserve to be heard.
Their story was one that exposed all the contradictions of the lockdown — the extent to which the new distancing regulations placed yet more burdens on some of the most vulnerable in our society