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01 June 2020

‘It’s truly terrifying’: Hunger stalks SA’s children during Covid-19 lockdown

Sunday Times

For eight weeks, three siblings in Vlakfontein, south of Johannesburg, survived on food scraps from neighbours and cabbages grown next to their shack.

The children, aged between 10 and 17, were found by social workers last week while checking on poor families in the area.

“They were starving,” said Mashudu Nemusunda, a clinical social auxiliary worker at the Teddy Bear Clinic for Abused Children.

In April, surveys by the University of Johannesburg and the Human Science Research Council (HSRC) pointed to growing levels of hunger under the lockdown, with up to 55% of informal settlement and township residents having no money to buy food.

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Sunday Times

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