Lavona van Aarde realised things were getting volatile, glanced over her left shoulder and caught sight of a man emerging from a house with a gun.
Moments later, Islamic Relief South Africa (IRSA) volunteers were robbed at gunpoint and hijacked while delivering water and food to nearly 800 people affected by flooding at Brown's Farm in Cape Town on Sunday.
The organisation is one of several distributing humanitarian aid to more than 100,000 people across the city affected by a series of winter cold fronts. “We had to distribute 789 meals to that community, and we used our truck, bakkie and two other cars, but before we left, we contacted the community leader to ask if it was safe to come,” said Van Aarde, who has been part of the relief organisation for 19 years.
“We could see the community started gathering in small groups down the street and around us. I called my colleague and said, ‘Look I don’t like this, I think we need to leave’, but then I saw the truck was already open waiting for us to offload.”
Just as they finished offloading, the mood on the ground was becoming tense as some residents took what they could and ran away. “In that moment I told them we needed to get out of here and when we moved into the car ... I looked over my left shoulder and I saw this guy running into one of the houses ... he grabbed a gun.”
The gunman pulled a passenger and driver from a branded relief agency vehicle and hijacked it.
Van Aarde and three other IRSA members hastily left in another relief team vehicle. As they made their escape, another man hit their vehicle with a firearm, but they managed to continue driving.
“As I looked back, I could see my other colleagues standing there and looking at us with this look of, ‘Are you really going to leave us alone here?’ The bakkie and truck were still left behind,” she said, adding that those colleagues were robbed of their cellphones.
“Thankfully, no staff or volunteers were physically harmed and are receiving group counselling,” said IRSA spokesperson Safwaan Mohamed.
Police spokesperson Sgt Wesley Twigg said: “Lansdowne police registered a carjacking case for investigation following a robbery in which a nonprofit organisation was robbed of their vehicle and cellphones on Sunday in Gqumashe Road, Brown’s Farm.”
Mohamed said it was “a very traumatic experience, because there were volunteers, and people who just completed their tertiary studies and high school who were there to help by giving back and assisting the community, so it was quite unfortunate that they had to be involved in this incident”.
He said some volunteers were in “a complete state of shock”.
This was the second hijacking the organisation has endured in two months — the earlier one being in Tongaat, KwaZulu-Natal, while helping weather-battered communities.
Mohamed said it was disheartening that humanitarian aid was desperately needed, including in places that are crime hotspots.
However, the latest incident would not stop the organisation from helping people in need.
“It is quite unfortunate, but the IRSA believes what we want to bring to the public’s knowledge is the difficulty we experience in assisting our fellow South Africans — what we mainly want is to find some sort of solution to these issues,” he said.
“What we do not want is to flag these communities and say, ‘No, these are no-go zones because you are going to get hijacked or robbed’. If this happens, it’s going to exacerbate the difficulties of these communities even further, and we know there are people in those communities that have a genuine need for assistance.”
The organisation will continue working with disaster risk management centre teams and the police while providing humanitarian assistance.
“Despite these challenges, IRSA has provided emergency support to more than 10,000 people affected by the storms across 25 areas. However, with more than 100,000 people and over 33,000 housing structures impacted, and with more inclement weather forecast in the coming days, the organisation is ramping up its efforts considerably,” said Mohamed.
The IRSA has provided hot meals, clean water, sandbags, mattresses, blankets, hygiene kits and other essentials to flood-stricken residents.
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