AS the Gauteng department of education and the government of the province vow to continue with plans to curtail the introduction of poison to schools and suspend food vendors from pitching their stalls outside, some have branded this extreme and far off the mark.
This as the numbers of children falling sick and dying from what is suspected to be poison ingested mainly through snacks bought either from tuck shops or the vendors who sell their ware outside schools continue to rise in the province and beyond, and as officials battle to pin down the actual source.
In response to this and as an immediate measure, last week the Gauteng department of education issued an order to all schools and said food, whether from within or outside, should not be provided to schoolchildren.
Saying the department was “deeply concerned” by how these incidents have led to both loss of life and illness among learners, spokesperson Steve Mabona explained that tuck shops run from within the school were to immediately be closed and vendors removed from the perimeters of schools as children flocked there after school to buy snacks.
Mabona said: “We are implementing immediate measures to safeguard the health and wellbeing of our learners.” He explained that measures to safeguard what was available for schoolchildren to eat via school governing bodies would become stricter when the ban was lifted, but for now, no one was to be providing anything while investigations continued.
But, this has not been well received by the mainly women vendors who have made a living off selling snacks outside schools for decades and who said without that income they would not be able to provide for their families.
“Every day I am unable to sell to the children means I cannot buy bread or feed my children, or even ensure that they go to school,” Martha Skhosana from Mamelodi said in response to the ban.
She and others said they had carved the niche to make money decades ago and had become known and trusted by both community members and schools. “And not once have we been accused of poisoning anyone,” Skhosana said.
The vendors said they were the soft target of the government’s failure to get to the bottom of the poisoning problem.
“Everyone knows we do not have the capacity to sell anything that has expired or that has been contaminated, as this is not just our livelihood; we have raised children and put them through tertiary education, have built homes, and have sustained families,” Rhudzani Ngobeni from Soshanguve said.
The culprits, the ladies said, were known, and no matter that investigations were unable to link the poisonous substance found with produce found (in spaza shops), that is where it all came from. “We are also victims as we buy from immigrant-run shops, which, while convenient and cheap, have never hidden their failure to adhere to basic hygiene and storage measures,” Ngobeni added.
And as the vendors protested, so did community members add their voice of displeasure to the department’s decision, with many from the townships saying the government’s ineptitude in dealing with foreign shopkeepers has been a long-standing problem.
“When a problem like this one arises, they will rush to check for expired goods and storage, and once that dies down, inspectors go back to their offices and forget about us,” wrote Many on social media, in a comment liked and reposted by many. The prevailing sentiment was that not only did foreign tuck shop owners exploit an already compromised sector, but they also showed no concern to complaints around that.
Joining the chorus against the directive was AfriForum, which said the move was “far too drastic”. The lobby group’s head of cultural affairs, Alana Bailey, said they were “seriously concerned about the recent spate of food poisoning cases that have affected learners” and expressed condolences to all who have lost family members.
She said they were, however, also concerned about the directive that prohibited the sale of food on school premises. “AfriForum agrees that steps to prevent more cases and deaths are essential, but we are of the opinion that this ban is far too drastic.”
She said the directive would no doubt affect learners negatively or even expose them to greater danger.
ActionSA Gauteng also added their voice and called on the department to immediately withdraw the suspension of food sales in and around school premises. This, they said, was a misdiagnosis of the real problem and was causing economic hardships to vendors who are, mostly, South African elderly citizens.
They called on the provincial legislature and the department to brief Gauteng residents on how many councillors had carried out audits of spaza shops within their wards; inform residents on how many of the spaza shops where audits were carried out were compliant and how many were not; and what action had been taken against non-compliant spaza shops.
“ActionSA believes that foodborne illnesses and deaths have reached calamity proportions. However, it cannot be resolved by protecting undocumented foreign nationals masquerading as businesspeople at the expense of law-abiding South African citizens,” said ActionSA as they vowed to stand by and assist vendors in getting them back to their place outside school gates.