Elderly people in Riverlea, south of Johannesburg, say their families do not have time for them.
As South Africa marks Social Development Month, SABC Digital News caught up with a group of elderly people during a breakfast organised by a local church.
Social Development Month aims to engage communities to identify their challenges and put together action plans to deal with these challenges.
The campaign, held in conjunction with the National Development Agency and the South African Social Security Agency, also aims to inform communities of the various social security programmes available to them and how these can be accessed.
Father Brian Daniels says, “The challenges that I have noticed is, and I’m sorry to say but some of their families haven’t got time for them and they do struggle and to be quite honest , it annoys me because some of the young people they tend to ignore their parents, they tend to forget how they were born and through whom they were born and why they are now where they are, that is painful for me.”
One of the elders, Faith Stevens also agrees: “They are not looking after the elderly, they are abusing the old people and their grannies. They are abusing them a lot.”
Stevens also adds that social grants are not sufficient, “They are not looking after us because the money they are giving us is not what we happy with because there is a lot of elderly people that are struggling.”
She says they do not feel safe in their community.
“We just all affected in the area by the crime, sometimes feeling that you are not safe in the area. I just think they (government) should be more aware of what is actually happening in the communities and to reassure people, to make them know that there is someone out there.”
