People in Cape Town have broken into tuck shops and attacked each other and police because hunger, one resident said.

In a viral video, Joanie Fredericks, a civic activist in Cape Town’s Mitchells Plain Township, said:

‘Mr President, we are in the midst of a food crisis. It’s war out here.’

The desperate appeal was made in a video posted to President Cyril Ramaphosa on social media that enforced a five-week lockdown to try to curb coronavirus spread.

Four weeks into a 35-day shutdown, poor communities face food shortages as wages have dried up for largely informal workers.

The shutdown, implemented on 27 March, has already put cash-strapped people under more pressure.

At the self-funded scheme run by Fredericks and other volunteers the number of people lined up for food is rising by the day.

‘When we started feeding people, we started with the very vulnerable, …kids, people with disabilities and pensioners.

‘But we’re way past the point of sending people away, Mr. President,’ begged an anxious Fredericks.

Several violent demonstrations have already erupted across the city over access to food packages handed out by authorities.

Hundreds of angry protesters have been fighting police fights, hurling rocks and setting up street barricades with burning tyres in Mitchells Plain on Tuesday over undelivered food parcels.

Police fired teargas and rubber bullets to disperse them. Social observers fear the risk of worsening these violent events.

‘There’s a bunch of us at home getting fat and there’s a bunch of people who really have nothing,’ said Julian May, director of the Centre of Excellence in Food Security, at the University of the Western Cape.

‘And it speaks a lot about the inequalities in South Africa (that) are likely to come out,’ said May.

‘As people are not getting food parcels or hear of other people getting parcels they are starting to react. And I don’t think that’s going to ease unless there’s more rapid delivery of food to people in poor areas.’