The sight of a six-year-old child who crawled around home and in the grassy space outside his home caught the eye of a resident of Vleifontein.
Ms Rose Mulembamuthihi's heart then went out to the young boy, Thendo Gift Tshamano. She decided to walk into his home and spend the day with Ms Rebecca Tshamano, the mother of the physically disabled boy. She politely asked why the boy was crawling around in the spiky grass.
"She told me that he had no wheelchair, and that she couldn't even afford a pram for him," Mulembamuthihi said. "Her story pained me so much and it reminded me of one night when I saw an MEC who was handing over a wheelchair to a disabled person on the TV news."
Mulembamuthihi thought that it would bring some relief to the boy's life if the MEC, whom she didn't even know, could also provide a wheelchair to him. But she didn't know how to go about contacting him.
"So I remembered that there was this one man whom I had watched grow up here in the township," she said. "Even from a young age, he would be going up and down helping people with this or that. The young man in question is Mr Geoffrey Tshibvumo."
She phoned Tshibvumo and requested him to arrange a wheelchair for Thendo. Tshibvumo is the chairperson of the DA caucus in the Makhado Municipality. "Taking good care of community members, the disabled and the aged is top priority for me as a councillor," he said. "I hereby call on the business community to join me and assist many other disabled people who are in serious need."
The boy's mother, Ms Rebecca Tshamano, thanked the DA for the provision of the wheelchair. She said that she couldn't have afforded the wheelchair herself because she was unemployed. "I wished for my son to have a wheelchair," she said. "At Elim Hospital they refused to give him a wheelchair, saying that they were only designated for adults and not children. This wheelchair has brought relief to my child, who will now be able to move around in it."