{"id":168491,"date":"2020-10-12T15:41:41","date_gmt":"2020-10-12T13:41:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/article\/homeless-reunited-their-families-after-lockdown\/"},"modified":"2020-10-12T15:41:41","modified_gmt":"2020-10-12T13:41:41","slug":"not-everything-that-came-out-of-this-covid-19-situation-was-bad","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/not-everything-that-came-out-of-this-covid-19-situation-was-bad\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cNot everything that came out of this Covid-19 situation was bad\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"article_body\">\n<p><a class=\"bigger-image\" href=\"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/media\/uploads\/images\/photographers\/Nokulunga%20Majola\/homeless_ethekwini_njabulo_1.jpg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt class=\"warn_big\" data-pagespeed-url-hash=\"1049763596\" src=\"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/not-everything-that-came-out-of-this-covid-19-situation-was-bad.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"caption\">About a month ago, aspiring artist Njabulo Khuzani was reunited with his family after moving into one of the eThekwini Homeless shelters at the start of lockdown in March. Photo: Nokulunga Majola<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Dozens of homeless people in Durban have been reunited with their families.<\/li>\n<li>It was part of the eThekwini Municipality\u2019s program to assist people who moved into their shelters at the start of lockdown.<\/li>\n<li>The City says it spent R66 million on homeless people during the first three months of lockdown.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<hr>\n<p>\u201cNot everything that came out of this Covid-19 situation was bad,\u201d says aspiring artist Njabulo Khuzani.<\/p>\n<p>Khuzani is one of the many homeless people who were moved into eThekwini Homeless shelters across Durban since March as part of the municipality\u2019s attempt to mitigate the spread of Covid-19.<\/p>\n<p>About a month ago, Khuzani, 29, from Mpangeni in northern KwaZulu-Natal, was reunited with his family. He has been living on the streets of Durban since 2017. \u201cWhen I left home, I had stolen money to feed my gambling addiction and when I returned home to ask for forgiveness, my mother and the rest of my family welcomed me with open arms. I was afraid at first but after meeting with them, I know that I am still loved.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf it was not for the municipality\u2019s homeless programme, I wouldn\u2019t have been discovered,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>Khuzani was speaking at the World Homeless Day event hosted by eThekwini Municipality at the Bellhaven Memorial Hall on Saturday. The City\u2019s interventions included reuniting homeless people with their families, providing access to employment and business opportunities, drug rehabilitation, access to health services, skills development and training, access to education and giving them accommodation during the peak of the Covid-19 outbreak.<\/p>\n<p>According to the City, it spent R66 million on homeless people during the first three months of lockdown. There are still over 700 homeless people living in shelters, it said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe outbreak of the Coronavirus brought something good for me as I got to stay at the shelter where I got all the help I needed to kick this bad habit and start afresh,\u201d Khuzani said.<\/p>\n<p>Khuzani said that during his time at the shelter, he met renowned musician Thina Zungu who is helping him record his first music album. He will continue living at the shelter until his album is done.<\/p>\n<p>Thabiso Dladla, 30, from Umlazi said that even though he has not yet found a job, he too was happy to have found his maternal and paternal families. Dladla said he left home at a young age. \u201cMy father died when I was nine and my mother when I was ten. Both my parent\u2019s families took care of me until I was old enough to be on my own. It has not been easy on the streets but I am grateful for the opportunity to change my life,\u201d said Dladla.<\/p>\n<p>He said when lockdown started, he went to live at the shelter where he received treatment and has since stopped using whoonga. \u201cI want to be with my family but at the moment, I am going to continue living at the shelter until I get a job. They have welcomed me back into their lives and the least I can do is to find something to do or go back to school to start a new life for myself,\u201d said Dladla.<\/p>\n<p>EThekwini Deputy Mayor Belinda Scott said: \u201cWith the continuous interventions and comprehensive plans to aggressively address homelessness in the city, we are also contributing to the realisation of the National Drug Master Plan which aims to reduce supply and demand of drugs for non-medicinal use, increase harm reduction treatment approaches and prevent new drugs from entering the market.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Scott said the success in helping hundreds of homeless drug users was a direct result of their partnership with civil society. \u201cWe couldn\u2019t have done this without the help from the Department of Health, the Department of Social Development as well as all of our medical NGOs,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<p>Scott said they are looking into a more sustainable program which will include establishing safe spaces for homeless people.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div id=\"article-copyright\">\n<p>\u00a9 2020 GroundUp. This article is licensed under a <a href=\"http:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-nd\/4.0\/\" rel=\"license\">Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>You may republish this article, so long as you credit the authors and GroundUp, and do not change the text. Please include a link back to the original article.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/not-everything-that-came-out-of-this-covid-19-situation-was-bad.jpg\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/\">Source: GroundUp<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>About a month ago, aspiring artist Njabulo Khuzani was reunited with his family after moving into one of the eThekwini Homeless shelters at the start of lockdown in March. Photo: Nokulunga Majola Dozens of homeless people in Durban have been reunited with their families. It was part of the eThekwini Municipality\u2019s program to assist people [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":168492,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[9928],"tags":[28001],"class_list":{"0":"post-168491","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-groundup","8":"tag-groundup","9":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/not-everything-that-came-out-of-this-covid-19-situation-was-bad.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168491","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=168491"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168491\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/168492"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=168491"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=168491"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=168491"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}