Children playing in the streets, queues outside spaza shops with no consideration for social distance and women selling vegetables.

These are scenes at Bramfischerville, Soweto, despite people having been encouraged to social distance to help stop the spread of Covid-19 which has infected hundreds of people and killed a handful in the country thus far.

When Sowetan visited the area this week, streets were abuzz with people going about their business as usual.

There were no soldiers and there were only two police bakkies that drove down the streets without calling residents to order.

Nobantu Evans, 36, said the situation was very stressful.

"We keep seeing the numbers of people affected with Covid-19 going up on a daily basis, but people here don't care. I am very worried about this situation, especially because I have a compromised system. We have not seen any soldiers which is why you see people walking up and down the streets. For people here, the lockdown means nothing," Evans said.

Another concerned resident Adam Moloi said some businesspeople were still selling liquor.

"I don't understand why the Pakistan-owned spaza shops are still operating even though President Cyril Ramaphosa called for businesses to close down. People also buy alcohol from some of these spazas.

"I don't even want to comment about people selling kotas, you will find long queues and the sad part about it, the sellers don't even have sanitisers. I don't know whether people are playing stupid or they are just being ignorant," Moloi said.

Precious Motsoeneng, 36, said: "What is happening here is unfair because you can't have other parts of the country on lockdown and have others operating as normal," she said.