Fundraising efforts to help Rasta Beds rise from the Jeppe ashes

As a fire tore through a Jeppestown, Johannesburg, building last week, people scrambled to salvage whatever they could.

Ultimately, as is inevitable, the blaze would win. Almost nothing would be left.

"There is nothing here, nothing left, nothing gained," said Andrew Levy, who works nearby and was at the scene when the fire broke out.

But Levy wants to make sure that there is hope for at least one business that run out of the building. He wants to raise R100,000 so that "Rasta Beds" can get back on its feet.

"Albert, Sean, Billy, Shepard, Ronald and Arch Fire are known for making beds in Jeppestown. Their shop on the bottom floor is filled with ash, drenched wood and the stench of disaster. Their dogs rummage through the rubble of a once-proud store where their work was admired.

"Above them, the ceiling caved in, and what was once their apartment is no longer. They can't even climb the stairs to see if there is anything left because the stairs have burnt down," said Levy.

In their workshop stood a tape edge machine that allowed them to seem new beds - a vital tool for their mattress-making business. In minutes, said Levy, it was destroyed.

It it this piece of equipment that Levy is trying to replace with a BackaBuddy fundraising campaign, launched on Wednesday afternoon. By Thursday afternoon, close to R16,000 of the R100,000 target had been raised.

Without the machine, they have to stitch by hand, a painful and time consuming process. They had 100 mattresses to deliver to Bloemfontein, with 75 of them having to be done by hand.

On the BackaBuddy campaign, Levy wrote: "In less than four hours [they] lost most of their stock and their machines to the flames ... and to opportunistic looters, as the Rastas threw their mattresses out of the burning building."

Levy said that if anyone had a tape edge machine to donate, they could contact him at andrew.levy@umuzi.org.