People around Mashemong, Makhulong, Kopanong in Tembisa (on the East Rand of Gauteng) are not taking the pandemic very seriously and do not believe that there is such thing called coronavirus. This is worrying because they are putting a lot of people in danger, including people who decided to quarantine themselves and their families including children. Some people around the location are carrying the mindset that they have survived a few diseases, that coronavirus is one of them and that it will pass and we will forget about it.
When I went around putting up posters to raise awareness about COVID-19 in my area I found that the lockdown is not working around Tembisa. People were roaming around the streets and children were playing outside. In addition there were no police, or metro police patrolling around the locations. They only passed once just to tell the people who were selling in spaza shops to close. They didn’t tell people to go indoors and stay safe.
Furthermore, some people have been walking around drunk, and are not thinking about washing their hands. At the local grocery shops, there was more than 100 people in a store and on top of that there was no social distancing in banks, or shops. As much as the regulations said there should only be a certain number of people in a taxi, this is not happening. This is because the taxi drivers are complaining about the reduced hours they have to work and how they will be able to buy petrol and still pay their bosses. So now many are taking as many passengers as they want in their taxis.
