“Sometimes it Falls Upon a Generation to be Great” Nelson Mandela

Freedom Day South Africa 2020

Ocean View, is a suburb situated in Cape Town in South Africa. It was established in 1968 as a township for “coloured” people who had been forcibly removed from so called “white areas” such as Simon’s Town, Noordhoek, Red Hill, Glencairn by the apartheid government under the Group Areas Act.

On the 5th of March 2020 South Africa confirmed its first coronavirus case and in the weeks that followed the infections were mostly confined to suburban areas and largely involved travellers arriving from Europe, the USA and the United Kingdom.

However that has all changed with the arrival of the virus in crowded urban areas where the access to clean water for hand-washing is scarce and self-quarantine practices are the most challenging.

South Africa with its population of 59 million people has a high unemployment rate of 29.1 percent. The “lockdown” orchestrated by the government in an attempt to slow the infection rate on a population living with the high HIV rate of 7.7 million people is understandably having a disastrous effect on an economy that was already in the midst of a recession.

All industries except those deemed to be essential in maintaining food supply, security and basic services such as water and electricity were forced to close.

The EMS Foundation has responded to the difficulties associated with the lockdown and COVID_19 by assisting a number of communities affected with unemployment and low incomes.

The foundation has assisted these communities with food security. These initiatives have been made possible by the generous logistical efforts of food retailer Pick n Pay and the Red Cross Society.

Freedom Day is a public or Bank Holiday in South Africa and commemorates the first democratic post-apartheid non-racial elections that were held on April 27th 1994, which saw Nelson Mandela elected as President.

The EMS Foundation assisted three hundred families with food security in Ocean View in celebration of Freedom Day 2020.

“Sometimes it falls upon a generation to be great. You can be that great generation.” Nelson Mandela