Midstream Estates, located in Olifantsfontein, Gauteng is a hub of massive activities that attract all types of job seekers from surrounding black residential areas. Scores of male and female job seekers usually line up along the main entrance with the hope of being picked up by prospective employers from the Estates. Unfortunately, a huge number of them do not get anything, sometimes for days on end.

The pangs of hunger have compelled some of the job seekers to literally beg for food from cars that enter or leave the Estates.

Jeff Moji has been interacting with these hungry people and assisting them with food and, whenever possible, words of encouragement. He started by joining a local church group that fed soup to people in Centurion, about 10 kilometres away from Midstream Estates. The plight and the increasing number of the people around Midstream Estates led him to start feeding them directly with the help of his wife and children.

Jeff started with peanut butter and jam sandwiches and small cartons of milk. This went on for a while and became labour-intensive as the number of people increased. He then timed his deliveries to be after 10:00 am, when some people had been picked up for odd jobs. He also relied on the fact that there are other residents who alternate to feed the hungry, albeit on inconsistent days.

The beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic presented a major escalation in hunger as Midstream Estates, like all other places, literally closed its doors.

At that time, Jeff obtained a special permission to drive to nearby locations of Tembisa and Olievenhoutbosch to deliver food parcels. On one occasion, he teamed up with an organisation called “Dare to Love” to deliver 10 kg packets of maize meal to more than 500 people from a squatter camp on the other side of Irene, across the highway of R21. His participation enabled him to secure many extra bags of mealie meal to bring back to the Midstream Estates corners.

As the pandemic ravaged on, Jeff’s church started preparing packets that contained rice, beans, soya and multivitamins for hungry people. This gave Jeff the much-needed relief from preparing bread and he added fruit to the rice packets. This way, hungry people would have something to eat during the day and something to cook when they got home. Each packet feeds about six people.

During winter, the most common fruit added are oranges for Vitamin C.

The packets allowed Jeff to contribute to hunger alleviation beyond Midstream Estates to corners around Centurion and as far as Wolmer, which is about 38 kilometres from Midstream Estates. Jeff added rice packets and fruit to other food parcels from a non-profit organisation to feed families in Wolmer. These families identified themselves by tying yellow plastics on their gates.

When asked what drives him to do such a thing, Jeff starts by acknowledging that his activities might look small compared to what the guys with deep pockets can do, but that any assistance to feed even just one person is in itself huge. He goes on to say that one of his many inspirations comes from his late mother who lived in Phiri, Soweto. She was an “unrepentant” giver. Every time when Jeff dropped her lots of groceries, he would come back a few days later and found her hungry. Before asking what happened to the food, he would be complimented by neighbours about the food that his mother had shared with them.

Jeff claims that he is deeply pained by the plight of the hungry and by those who scoff at beggars as “criminal elements”. He is in the process of registering a non-profit organization to increase his activities. He has also personally crafted a website called www.thabong.org, where he hopes to coordinate the effort of those who want to collaborate with him to feed the hungry, starting at Midstream Estates.

The details of Jeff’s other feeding activities happen at Correctional Services and on programs for the youth, both free and incarcerated. The details of these can be divulged in a separate narrative.