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South Africa: Tensions High at Tokai Centre About Food
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Cape Argus (Cape Town)
9 July 2008
Posted to the web 9 July 2008
Jean Yung
Cape Town
After a drastic change of diet for the displaced foreigners being accommodated at the Chrysalis Academy in Tokai, tensions remain high, with staff being accused of barring legal representatives from the property and of stealing donated items.
Emotions have run high since the Red Cross took over responsibility on June 30 for providing meals for the 120 foreign adults and 45 children.
Last week, police were called in to deal with protests over the quality and quantity of the food they were being given.
"They want to treat us badly, to have us suffer or get sick. This bread is expired," said John Dirudonne, from the Democratic Republic of Congo.
According to the Red Cross's delivery schedule, which was arranged with disaster management, residents are given their first meal, of juice and brown bread with jam, at 11am.
"There's butter if available, although it's not included in the budget," said Levona Vanaarde, office manager at Red Cross.
For dinner, the Red Cross provides rice with fish, chicken, mince, or samp with meat and bones.
According to Vanaarde, all the meals are prepared with fresh produce.
"We have fresh deliveries of bread every morning. It is never stale or expired."
Disaster management allocated R5 a day for breakfast and R12 for supper for each person.
Expatriates have alleged Chrysalis is not allowing volunteers to supplement these meals with donated food, by excluding volunteers from the kitchen or by stealing donated food.
Chrysalis co-ordinator Stephen Cohen and provincial representative Mark Jansen deny this. In one case, "people were just taking stuff out of the kitchen to put in the clothing stall", Jansen said.
On July 1, nine interviewers from the Legal Resource Centre, Aids Law Project and the Treatment Action Campaign were turned away at the gate and told to come back later because the situation was particularly unstable that day.
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The nine are awaiting a reply to their letter of complaint to the provincial and mayoral offices.
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