In a dusty street of mishmash houses in Naledi Extension 2, Soweto, lives Vincent Lekwai, 40, a cleaner at a restaurant who has to feed a family of nine on his monthly salary of R2,800. Travelling costs of R600 a month take a hefty bite out of his earnings.
For the first few days after payday, a meal for the family consists of pap and cabbage, or potatoes. If they can afford it, they will add chicken feet.
But most days the adults don’t eat so that the children can. Their meal could be a slice of bread each, or a shared packet of chips.
Mashudu Nemusunda of the Teddy Bear Clinic says the family are living in a cycle of extreme anguish.
The nine are divided between a 3mx3m breeze-block home and a 1.5mx1.5m zinc shack. There are no beds or mattresses, no privacy and no toilets — just a pit latrine for common use. Their water comes from a bucket filled at a tap outside and their food comes in dribs and drabs — now mostly donations from the Teddy Bear Clinic, whose actual role is to support abused children through the criminal justice system.
But Nemusunda said they could not just ignore the family’s plight. He said they were one of five families in the area who were severely malnourished because they did not have enough money for food.
Lekwai has four children with his estranged wife and one with partner Julia Moda, 29.
In lockdown, Lekwai was without work for almost two years. To add to his woes, the national school nutrition programme, which fed his four children, stopped providing for some time.
Nemusunda said two of the children became ill as a result of malnutrition and poor sanitation, and the family suffer from malnutrition.
He got involved three years ago when Lekwai grew concerned about the welfare of his children, who were living with their mother at the time.
The children were eventually placed in Lekwai’s care. In addition, he also supports his sister Lerato Mosii, 27, and her toddler.
Moda and Mosii can’t find work.
In 2020, Lekwai’s mother died, which brought to an end the R1,985 old-age grant she received that contributed to the household finances.
According to Nemusunda, four of the children’s grants are in the name of Lekwai’s mother-in-law, who receives R460 per child.
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When the Sunday Times visited on Tuesday, Lekwai was at work, but Moda and Mosii spoke about their hardships.
“Lekwai is a good and caring man,” Moda said. “He is suffering so much, I can see it in his shoulders and face. He just comes home and goes to sleep.”
“We often go to bed without eating so that the children can,” Mosii said.
The Sunday Times mistook a 32-year-old cousin for Mosii’s young son. The woman was thin and very short — a sign of stunting from malnourishment from a young age. She works as a waste collector but has a drug habit which eats up all her income. She was there to ask the family for food.
The homestead is 4km from Naledi High School, which played an important role at the start of the Soweto uprising in 1976.
But today, the ground under the feet of the school’s pupils is still dusty, not from running away from the police but from the slow drag of another violent act: the pain of hunger and the inequality of malnutrition.
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