• Thembisa Majikijela and her family are using their own money to feed more than 400 residents after her community organisation lost its main sponsor.

• Majikijela also feeds clinic patients who need food with their medication and fears hunger could force some people to stop taking their treatment.

More than 400 hungry people are depending on Thembisa Kuluvuyo Majikijela and her family to keep food on their plates.

Her main sponsor has walked away. She has lost her own job. Money is tight. But the pots are still cooking.

Majikijela, founder of Intsika Yesizwe Community Development in Philippi East, Cape Town, refuses to abandon the residents who have come to depend on her organisation for food.

The organisation feeds more than 400 people from Philippi East and Nyanga East.

With its main sponsor gone, Majikijela is now relying on her husband, relatives, friends and members of the community to keep the feeding programme alive.

She started the organisation in 2018 with two other members while she was still working as a bus driver.

She has since lost that job.

“I started this in 2018 with two other members. Things are very difficult now as we’ve lost our sponsor, but I will not abandon a community that has come to depend on us. I was working as a bus driver but lost my job,” Majikijela said.

Her husband has become one of the programme’s lifelines.

Every month, he takes money from his salary and sends it to the centre so that food can be bought and meals can be prepared.

“I am blessed that my husband supports us. Every month, from his salary, he sends something to the centre so that we can continue feeding the community,” she said.

For Majikijela, closing the kitchen would mean knowing that people who once depended on her could be going to sleep hungry.

“If we abandoned these people, they would go to bed on empty stomachs, and we don’t want that,” she said.

Her organisation has also taken its fight against hunger to a local clinic.

Majikijela said she discovered that some patients were not taking their medication because they had no food.

That led the organisation to start serving meals at the clinic.

“I noticed that some people stop taking their medication because they don’t have food, so we serve them at the clinic, as we have the drive that says ‘no medication on an empty stomach,'” she said.

Majikijela knows what it means to struggle.

She grew up disadvantaged and promised herself that if she ever had the chance, she would help people facing the same hardship she experienced.

That promise is now being tested as she tries to keep the organisation going without its main sponsor.

She said the loss of funding affects far more than the organisation itself.

“When a sponsor pulls out, it affects a lot of people. It means some people could get sicker because they will stop taking medication if they don’t have food,” she said.

Children are also on her mind.

“There will be kids who won’t concentrate at school because they are stressed about what they will eat when they get home,” Majikijela said.

She says the organisation is now surviving “by the grace of God”.

Even the search for another sponsor is costing her family money.

Majikijela uses the family car to travel around looking for possible sponsors while the family pays for the petrol.

“We can continue by the grace of God. Even when going around looking for sponsors, we are using my family’s car, and petrol is expensive, but we won’t stop, as we believe that one day we will find a sponsor,” she said.

She is appealing to anyone who can help to come forward.

“We are urging anyone who can assist with anything that will help us carry on with this to come forward.”

For community member Linda Nxodo, the feeding programme is not simply a good deed.

It means she does not have to go to bed hungry.

“Most people stop taking their medication when they don’t have food, but at least they have people like Majikijela who are pushing on even when times are tough,” Nxodo said.

She worries about what will happen if Majikijela can no longer afford to keep going.

“I am one of the members who doesn’t go to bed hungry because of her, and I pray that they get a sponsor, because as beneficiaries, we fear that one day she will stop,” she said.

Ward 35 councillor Mboniswa Chitha said they do not assist the soup kitchens.

He said soup kitchens are advised to approach the Department of Social Development for assistance.

For now, Majikijela has no major sponsor to carry the financial load.

Instead, her husband shares part of his salary, friends and relatives help where they can and the family spends its own money travelling in search of support.

It is a heavy burden for one family.

But with more than 400 people waiting for meals, Majikijela is determined to keep going.

For her, every pot of food means another person does not have to face the night on an empty stomach.

Pictured above: Intsika Yesizwe Community Development continues feeding residents in Cape Town after losing its main sponsor.

Image source: Supplied