South Africa’s Biggest Social Relief Package For The Poor Hardest-Hit by COVID-19

Charles Molele

President Cyril Ramaphosa’s historic R500 billion stimulus package designed to help businesses in distress, vulnerable children and poor families has hit the right chords.

In the wake of the novel coronavirus, millions of South Africans living in the country’s sprawling townships and informal settlements, whom the Martinique-born philosopher and psychiatrist Franz Fanon called the ‘wretched of the earth’, have been struggling to make ends meet due to limitations that the pandemic has placed on their ability to generate incomes and meaningful livelihoods.

 Sitting sombrely behind his desk at the Union Buildings in Pretoria, Ramaphosa said the plight of millions of South Africans who are unable to feed their children due to the lack of work or income during the lockdown was his government’s biggest challenge.

He said this was at the centre of his government’s stimulus package, and required an economic response that was equal to the scale