Residents are pleading for donations, food, clothes and water as they try to rebuild their lives after Friday’s fire razed their possessions to the ground. The fire obliterated 1000 dwellings, leaving approximately 5,500 people displaced. Du Noon residents are struggling to come to grips with what has been called the largest informal settlement fire in the Western Cape since the 2013 Khayelitsha fire, with ‘complete chaos as far as the eye can see’.
One of the residents and community leaders affected, Emihle Kanityi, 28, said that it has been a great loss, and that when the fire raged, people were at work and were unable to rescue any belongings. “A lot of children don’t even have uniform to go back to school. They have no stationery, they don’t have anything.
So we would really appreciate any donation in that department. So we’re really trying our best to get everyone who’s gonna assist us in that department. “We need food to eat.
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Other people don’t even have the materials to build their houses because they were away…they were in the Eastern Cape. So we have nothing,” Kanityi said. “As you know, January is a very difficult month.
As we are sitting here, we have nothing… We don’t even have any clothes to wear. I’m wearing the same clothes that I was wearing yesterday.” “At this point, we need a helping hand. We don’t need people who are gonna be there and just take a picture of us.
The only thing that I’m gonna say is that we are all people. This might happen to us, and tomorrow it might happen to you. “The only thing that we need from people is for them to come and assist us because there are people who are disabled here.
There are children here. If you have water, especially if you live in the surrounding areas, if you have water in your place, you can come and assist us with that,” Kanityi said.
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