Dispute over municipal boundaries leaves rural, orphaned children hungry

Ngobi Village is a remote community about 100km from Pretoria near the town of Hammanskraal. The village is inhabited by mostly old people who are unemployed, with most depending for survival on government grants.

Because there are no opportunities in the village, most young people of working age have moved elsewhere to find work, often leaving the elderly to look after their children.

With food prices soaring and unemployment on the rise, grants are not enough to sustain whole families. They often run out of money before the end of the month, leaving people hungry and forced to seek alternative means of survival.

The sparsely equipped kitchen where food is prepared at Motheo Children’s Centre in Ngobi Village, Hammanskraal. (Photo: Zukiswa Pikoli)

Most families use grants to supplement the income of the breadwinner, who is often an informal worker or in a low-paying job. Even when the government increased the grant and provided the Covid-19 relief grant to those who had previously not qualified, it was not enough.

Obakeng Motheokgane (31) runs Motheo Children’s Centre with a recently retired nurse, 61-year-old Anna Moloisana (who he says is now his adoptive mother), in Ngobi Village and says being an orphan led him to establish the centre.

“I never knew my mother; all my grandmother told me is that my mother died three days after I was born,” said Motheokgane. When his grandmother was unable to take care of him, she sent him to a nearby orphanage.

Seeing the plight of children in their village, Moloisana and Motheokgane teamed up to provide shelter and food for orphans and children from extremely poor homes whose families could not afford to feed them.

Motheokgane inherited his grandmother’s house and converted it into the children’s centre, catering for children between the ages of 15 and 17.

The bare kitchen with a few lemons from a tree at Motheo Children’s Centre in Ngobi Village, Hammanskraal. (Photo: Zukiswa Pikoli)

The children attend school, but: “How can you concentrate on books and education when you and your family are hungry? Most children just go to school in the morning then after break when they receive food, they go home.”

Motheokgane says although the children’s home is formally registered, they do not get assistance or resources from the Department of Social Development (DSD) because of a dispute over which municipality should be servicing them.

He says the department insists that they should be speaking to Brits municipality, about 140km away, though Pretoria is closer.

Motheokgane says that they depend on Moloisana’s pension money and sometimes collect cans to sell for recycling to buy food. They also rely on irregular food handouts and can go a month without donations.

Showing Maverick Citizen around, it is clear that the Motheo Children’s Centre urgently needs help. The rusty kitchen cupboard is empty and there are four lemons in the fruit and vegetable stand.

One of the four bedrooms for children at Motheo Children’s Centre in Ngobi Village, Hammanskraal. (Photo: Zukiswa Pikoli)

While they try to provide food and stimulation for 17 children, only seven children can be accommodated at the centre at present. They share three bedrooms, with old, makeshift beds and very thin bedding. With winter fast setting in and the house’s ceiling in disrepair, it is difficult to imagine that the bedding will suffice.

Operation Hunger first heard about the Motheo Children’s Centre when it was running a campaign to assist communities with Covid-19 relief when the pandemic hit South Africa in 2020. That is when Motheokgane contacted the organisation asking for food for the children at the centre.

Speaking on behalf of the organisation, field researcher Nguni Naphtali says Operation Hunger works according to five phases, and partners with communities for up to 18 months while they get their food projects off the ground.

• Phase One is assessing people’s level of nutrition and the extent of their malnourishment.


• Phase Two focuses on providing immediate relief in the form of food packages that provide for people’s nutritional needs and include mealie meal, oil, tinned fish and beans.


• Phase Three is the project phase, which involves initiating a project based on what resources a community needs, such as water or skills development, like learning to plant their own food.


• Phase Four provides people with the education they need to maintain their nutritional wellness and health.


• Phase Five is about ensuring that the community can sustain its food needs by taking ownership and running its own food production projects.

Motheo Children’s Centre has been receiving assistance from Operation Hunger in the form of food relief packages and help in establishing a food garden growing spinach, cabbage, turnips, spring onions, butternuts and carrots, which the children have been trained to tend.

“Government never even came into our community to hand out the Covid-19 food parcels that others were getting,” says Motheokgane. DM/MC