PORT Elizabeth businessman Dave Allen has offered to pay if good samaritan baker Mike Evans is fined by traffic police for “illegally” donating bread to poor people and starving animals.
Walmer resident Allen is known to readers of The Herald for his humanitarian deeds over the years, including paying the stipend of an old man who lost out in a state pension mix- up in 1995.
Followers of Allen‘s contributions to The Herald‘s letters page also know him as a vociferous critic of the traffic department officials and what he calls their reluctance to deal with errant minibus taxi drivers while preying on “soft targets”, like single women in expensive cars.
Last week, Knysna bakery owner Evans was threatened with jail or a R500 fine if he continued distributing day-old bread to the needy in Bossiesgif informal settlement, Plettenberg Bay.
Bitou traffic officers said Evans required a licence to give away the bread and said he was “littering” when he fed starving goats and dogs in the settlement.
The Bossiesgif/Qolweni settlement is home to several thousand shack dwellers, most of them unemployed.
After reading Evans‘s story in The Herald, Allen wrote a letter offering to pay the traffic fine.
“He can donate bread, I will donate fine money and the traffic department can do what it does best – soft target harassment,” Allen wrote.
He said the gesture was to draw attention to “this ridiculous situation where someone is being penalised for helping people who really need help”.
“Where is the ubuntu our leaders keep talking about and calling for?”
Source: The Weekend Post
