I cannot recommend more highly that you do what I recently did – remove homeless people from their homes, forcibly if you have to.
It is so awful, gut-wrenching, and confounding that it becomes important. It is one of those experiences that forces you to think more deeply about this country and your place in it.
I was part of a group of volunteers who, together with the police, municipality and a waste removal company, do ‘community clean-ups.’ You get together, decide on a route and chase the homeless people from the streets.
Cape Town has a different pattern of poverty from the one I was used to in Johannesburg. In Cape Town, the homeless are visible on corners, outside shopping centres and in your suburbs. They live on the pavements, as much part of the fauna and flora as fynbos, but a lot more uncomfortable to look at and a lot trickier to weed out of a walkway.
A couple was living on a double mattress on the corner of the R27. Every day, they made their bed with a plastic sheet and returned at night, with all kinds of trinkets found in dustbins or received as handouts. They were a landmark in the area; you could use them to give directions.
That morning was the day we destroyed their home. We picked it up and threw it in the back of the pickup truck. The couple were in distress. “Are you even human?” the man shouted. “That is my home!” The group continued undeterred. The rule is: people get one warning to pack whatever they can carry and leave. The rest goes to the rubbish dump.
Scurried in terror
“Have you no love and happiness in your life, that you can do this?” wailed the man. His wife scurried in terror, trying to save whatever she could; a toothbrush, a few blankets, plastic jewellery. All the while, there was a group of at least 12 people, fitted with gloves, some with guns, staring at them and judging them.
“If this is your home, why is it so dirty? Sis!” mocked our team leader, pointing at the filth on the pavement. The woman threw her hands up in the air in exasperation, begging for some kindness, then randomly stabbed at some dust to look as though she was following the orders. Her shame and self-consciousness were disrupted by her husband yelling: “Jou ma se poes” at a municipal worker. The whole group erupted in laughter. Something terrible had become a comedy.
There are approximately 14,000 street people in Cape Town, according to the Western Cape government. All the people we uprooted that day had been offered space in shelters before. Even if all of them agreed to go, there are only 3,500 shelter beds in the city.
For the person living on the street, a shelter is not necessarily the best option. They often have rules people don’t like, including limitations on drug or alcohol use. Shelters also split families up or separate men from women. This alone makes a life living in the reeds to be with your loved ones more meaningful to some. It is also a lifestyle that feels independent. Many street people have mental problems, so they cannot cope with the socialisation required in a communal setting.
In Cape Town, the number of homeless is increasing, due to an influx of poor people into the province and post-Covid employment woes.
Guerrilla war
Thus, a guerrilla war develops between homeowners and the street people. The ‘bergies’ know their rights, emboldened by a recent High Court decision. They know that if they have built a shelter and occupied it for more than 48 hours, they can claim squatters’ rights and demand a court order before they move.
Similarly, groups like the one I joined have scouts going around spotting new structures and laying complaints and summoning the troops as soon as possible. It takes a certain type of person to do what they do, especially with as much glee. To be clear, these community clean-up groups are very disciplined, know the law and have the consent of the council. I am grateful for what they do, and I support them in principle.
And yet I tried to find a way to avoid getting my hands dirty. I lurked in the background picking up general litter, looking busy and averting my eyes. I couldn’t bring myself to rip apart a structure someone had carefully constructed and called ‘home”.
I still refer to the group as ‘we’ because I want the work to be done. I don’t like the idea of people living on the streets, but I dislike the idea of them living on my street even more. I suppose that is why we made the hangman wear a black mask, not so much to protect his identity, but to shield ourselves from what was being done in our name.
It’s easy to look away in Cape Town because the mountain is so pretty, the waves so lovely and the swearwords so colourful. If you look more closely at the numbers, the waters become muddied. The form of indigence down here points to a larger separation between the rich and poor than what I was used to in Gauteng.
Growing and coping
The perception is that Cape Town works better: the rich people are moving here, and the city is growing and coping with the growth better than Johannesburg. Cape Town has sorted things out, somehow, that is why I moved here.
When you start separating the fynbos from the weeds in the stats, however, the landscape looks different. General Household Survey data from Stats SA (2023) reveal a significantly larger percentage of people who use a bucket toilet or open defection (veld, pavement) in the Western Cape than in Gauteng – nearly double and four times as many for open defecation.
By a similar margin, more households in the Western Cape have swimming pools and pianos than in Gauteng. It is a curious juxtaposition, but it paints a vivid picture. Income distribution figures show that the money and job opportunities are still in Johannesburg, the biggest growth is in Pretoria and the bigger extremes are in Cape Town. There is nothing alarming about any of this, we live in a complicated country, It’s just that I didn’t know it until I opened my eyes on a bright and sunny day and the first thing I looked at wasn’t the big mountain, it was a bergie.
I don’t have a piano, but it sounds cool to have one, especially since so many other Capetonians do. I don’t want to be playing Beethoven while someone is shitting on my sidewalk, however.
So what to do? It starts with having the bothersome conversations and participating in the difficult work. If that is too much, at least let us show more compassion to the homeless, the volunteers and the government, who are just people too, doing the work we don’t want to do.
And show some kindness to yourself, because it is a bumpy ride living in this country.
As a final note, please imagine now, the sounds of Beethoven’s 5th Symphony as background accompaniment to the scenes I just described. Ta-ta-ta-da! The famous opening four notes of the 1st movement accompany a different type of (bowel) movement at the traffic lights. The notes are stated with strength and intensity. The truck stops and the homeless are confronted. The pace of the music rises and fluctuates. There is shouting and anger. Beethoven paints a picture of frustration and deliberation, then contemplation and resolve.
Conflicted
One of the volunteers is conflicted about her role in the eviction. She is not sure whether she will be able to stomach joining another operation like this. The music introduces staccato and major key changes, thus advancing the musical story of the unyielding situation.
Weeks later, the woman notices that the couple of the mattress have returned to their spot. They now sleep on a wooden pallet. The woman decides to show more kindness to the street people. She greets them and looks them in the eye. The oboe slows, and decrescendos to piano. Then the woman returns home and files a complaint on the City of Cape Town App.
The song ends as it started, but with tremolo.
[Image: https://www.flickr.com/photos/barbourians/8457088307]
The views of the writer are not necessarily the views of the Daily Friend or the IRR.
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