As South Africa braced for its coronavirus lockdown this week, touching stories emerged of ordinary people going to extraordinary lengths for perfect strangers.

In Paarl, a flower farm showed love to an old age home already under lockdown, warming the hearts of residents who have been unable to see family or friends during arguably the most worrying global crisis in their lifetimes.

In Delmas, Good Samaritans went about buying up any products from street hawkers they could find. Like much of their fellow countrymen, the hawkers will be confined to their homes until mid-April and unable to earn an income.

Meanwhile, young Joshua spent his last free hours buying ingredients for making delicious home-cooked meals for pensioners in his neighbourhood, to help them get through the 21-day lockdown period. He only charged them the cost of his ingredients, nothing more.

Restaurant customers were also angels in disguise, with one patron in Balito tipping R3,500 on a R172 bill as a way of helping out waiters and waitresses who will be without income in the coming weeks.

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Everyone knows the struggle, especially in the hospitality industry. We want to thank this amazing customer who took the spirit of #ubuntu and decided to give a tip of R500 to all waiter’s present at work today. God bless you Mr X!!! #covid_19 #salockdown #ZarasCafe

A post shared by Zaras Cafe (@zarascafe) on Mar 24, 2020 at 11:42pm PDT

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