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Complaints are streaming in about the sale of food parcels at excessive prices and alleged preferential treatment being given to friends and families of ANC members when it comes to distributing food aid.
This comes in the midst of increasing complaints of discrimination by undocumented immigrants when it comes to handing out the food parcels.
In Calvinia in the Northern Cape, angry residents took to the streets on Wednesday.
They blocked roads, started fires and refused to practise social distancing, claiming that only ANC voters were receiving food parcels, said DA MPL Gizella Hartnick-Opperman.
“That is the case everywhere – in my municipality, Hantam and the Karoo Hoogland.”
On Thursday, former ANC MP Makhosi Khoza tweeted that she was being overwhelmed by phone calls from people in KwaZulu-Natal who were claiming that ANC council members were handing out food parcels to friends and family.
In Gauteng, officials from the department of social development have been accused of dropping off parcels at the homes of their families.
Abram Mashishi, chairperson of the SA National Civic Organisation in Tshwane, has laid a charge of corruption against the department at Silverton Police Station in Pretoria.
He said officials were pretending to be distributing parcels across Tshwane.
“But they are only going to certain parts, such as Mamelodi, while the rest of Tshwane suffers,” he said.
Poverty-stricken communities in Eersterust, west of Mamelodi, complained that they were not receiving food parcels.
On Friday, the DA mayoral candidate in Tshwane, Randall Williams, accused the city’s new administrator, Mpho Nawa, of violating lockdown regulations by holding an “interest group” meeting to distribute food parcels to ANC military veterans.
“The DA has known for some time that Nawa is a deployee of the ANC. Prioritising ANC military veterans above elderly people who are desperate for food is despicable,” said Williams.
Nawa denied this, saying the meeting was held with 10 delegates to discuss a memorandum that had been handed over to the city.
“It was not partisan. It was aimed at giving the interest groups a chance to discuss the city’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic.”
Williams said the DA had been reliably informed that former ANC councillors were selling food parcels for R50 in Soshanguve, despite written instructions to all councillors telling them to stay away from food parcels.
According to reports by online newspaper Daily Maverick, food parcels in Bloemfontein have been selling for R1 200.
These parcels contain just 1kg of sugar, a tin of sardines, a loaf of bread, maize meal and a head of cabbage.
Owen Zima, a Malawian who has lived in the township of Olievenhoutbosch for 16 years, said some foreign nationals had been asked to show their South African identity documents to receive food parcels.
The same thing happened to two Zimbabweans, Sam Moyo and Elmon Mncube.
The ANC did not respond to questions dealing with complaints by foreign nationals.
Panyaza Lesufi, Gauteng’s MEC for education and the acting MEC for social development, indicated that undocumented migrants first needed to get their papers in order at home affairs.
Mashishi said that, while the request for an ID document to be produced was standard procedure when beneficiaries were being signed up, people should be treated more humanely given the current crisis.
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