ANGRY MOB ATTACKS VOLUNTEER, BUCOPHO

NEW VILLAGE - The quick intervention of police officers saved a volunteer from Swaziland Caritas and a Manzini South Constituency councillor (bucopho) from a mob of close to 1 000 residents.

The volunteer and bucopho were verbally attacked and almost manhandled by the residents of the area yesterday.
The incident happened at around 10am.

This was during a verification exercise conducted by Swaziland Caritas, which had been assigned to register people for food aid and cash-based transfer amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

The verification exercise came after the National Disaster Management Agency (NDMA) paid cash to some of the residents on Monday. Each household received E700 to buy groceries
The exercise was aimed at ensuring that all qualifying beneficiaries received the money.

Beneficiaries

During the verification exercise, the beneficiaries were called according to a list to sign against their names and to confirm if they had received the money.
The residents became angry after the volunteer called the names of the qualifying beneficiaries.
Upon noticing that their names were not being called, some of the residents, who formed a majority, became agitated and they verbally attacked the volunteer who was calling out the names, while demanding answers on why they had been omitted.

The volunteer, whose identity could not be immediately ascertained due to the fact that she was whisked away by the police from the crowd soon after the commencement of the commotion, angered the residents when she tried to explain why some of them had been left out.
She explained to the residents that the registration was divided into four phases.

She informed the livid residents that the registration process was not over yet. However, the volunteer’s explanation seemingly fell on deaf ears.
Instead of bringing clarity to the residents, it prompted them to demand further answers on the matter.

The residents stated that according to their understanding, when the registration process started, they were informed that the most vulnerable persons would be given preference, yet the aforementioned were sidelined and instead landlords and civil servants benefitted.

Most of the residents, who are tenants in the area and are employed in textile firms in Matsapha, also inquired from the volunteer why they were omitted because they were also hard hit by the coronavirus pandemic given the fact that they had been laid off from work, while some of them have been made to work in shifts.

The volunteer did not have answers to some of the questions posed by the residents, save to assure them that the registration was still ongoing.   
Police had to be roped in as she tried to explain the whole exercise to the residents.

The law enforcers escorted her to a police van, where they secured her safety by forbidding any resident from coming near the police van.
As if that was not enough, the angry residents then shifted their focus from the volunteer to the area’s bucopho, identified as Ntombikayise Dlamini, whom they accused of favouritism.

According to the residents, Dlamini portrayed an element of partiality when registering the residents eligible to receive the food aid and cash-based assistance from government.
They made a lot of allegations about her which cannot be printed because they could not be proven. As the verbal attack on the bucopho intensified, the police had no choice but to intervene and they whisked her away from the residents as well.

Hanson Ngwenya, one of the residents said they were eager to know the criteria which the National Disater Management Agency (NDMA) followed when selecting the residents to benefit from the food aid programme.

Disabled

This he said was because the elderly and people with disabilities were omitted from the list of beneficiaries and allegedly, energetic civil servants, and landlords benefitted.

He said they were advocating that government should be hands-on in the registration exercise since there was alleged favouritism among the people entrusted to conduct the registration exercise.

Sibusiso Vilakati, who has a disability, said he was very disappointed when he discovered that his name was not on the list of the candidates who qualified for the food aid programme.
Vilakati mentioned that what disturbed him the most was that certain people from rich families who were not disabled were allegedly given preference over him.
He alleged that some of the people who received the food aid had received it twice in a row.  It is worth noting that less than 25 people were called during the verification exercise as having qualified for the food aid programme yet the residents claimed that over 700 people had registered.

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