SA
Pretoria Jews come to aid of victims of Marabastad violence
The Pretoria Council of the South African Jewish Board of Deputies, the Pretoria Union of Jewish Women (UJW), and international disaster-relief agency CADENA recently came to the aid of indigent, dispossessed people in Marabastad outside of Pretoria, where civil unrest has destroyed the homes of more than 200 people, local and foreign. The appeal was made by local Democratic Alliance councillor Shaun Wilkinson.
OWN CORRESPONDENT
Based on the requests of relief facilitators, 200 mattresses, 1 800kg of mixed staples (mealie meal and samp) and about 6 000 cans of food, together with hygiene kits, plastic buckets, cooking utensils, and a supply of baby food were collected. They were given to relief facilitators by Pretoria Council Chairperson Louis Pearlman, secretary Diane Wolfson, and UJW representative Ciska Lewis in the presence of Tshwane Executive Mayor Stevens Mokgalapa and Wilkinson.
Said Pearlman, “These vulnerable people have been subjected to baseless human cruelty. The only antidote is human kindness. The Jewish community empathises with their plight in that its forebears were subject to similar treatment just more than 100 years ago in the pogroms of Eastern Europe, similarly for no other reason than them being ‘other’ and ‘vulnerable’.” Pearlman thanked Dis-Chem and the many other donors who made the project possible.