The Chronicles of the Homeless

Photo: Shusuke Tsuto

The Chronicles of the Homeless Outcasts With a Fighting Spirit

5th January 2015 0 Comments 3357 views

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WORDS Shusuke Tsuto

In Cape Town, homeless people are numerous and their presence is prominent. You can find them at traffic lights begging for money, outside a McDonalds imploring you to buy them a meal because they have not eaten for days or loitering in front of your favourite bar, waiting to pounce on the next intoxicated person. The daily routine of street people is often too insignificant for society to even give it a second thought. Intrigued by the presumably monotonous lives of these supposedly second-rate citizens, I decided to see what a day in the lives of the homeless is really like.

Sibo’s story

Most of the homeless people interviewed had a common thread in their lives – the loss of their parents when they were young or their parents were involved in crime and drugs. Photo: Chris Quinn

Sibo* is a 34-year-old homeless drug dealer. Originally from Idutywa, a town in the Eastern Cape now known as Dutywa, he remembered that as a child, he loved watching TV shows and movies featuring police officers. He hoped that when he was older, he would be a police officer. When Sibo was in grade 7, his mother died from tuberculosis (TB) and since she had been the main breadwinner (his father abandoned them before he was born), Sibo’s life took a turn for the worse. He could not pay school fees and soon was unable to attend school. To earn an income at the age of 14, he worked on a farm. After working there for 2 years, earning R200 every month, he fled the farm and was supported by his uncle for the next 15 years, working temporary jobs from time to time. He finally came to Cape Town in May 2014, seeking job opportunities for a better life. Here, his life on the streets began.

For people like Sibo, drugs have been one of the ways to make money. He stumbled across people selling drugs in the hustle and bustle of the flourishing Long Street night life and he realised that it was a way for him to make a few bucks. When members of a drug syndicate approached him and offered him the chance to work for them, Sibo jumped at the opportunity. Now, he buys drugs from the syndicate and sells it to his customers.

In Long Street, the buying and selling of drugs is surreptitiously accomplished. When I walked along Long Street at around 8:30 at night, Sibo talked to me and said, ‘Hi, how are you? You want weed?’ I said ‘No, I don’t do that.’ I noticed that although he was working as a car guard, he looked like a homeless person. I asked him, ‘Do you also sell other types of drugs?’ He said, ‘Yes I have all kinds of drugs. What do you want?’ I then told him that I am a journalist writing an investigative story about homeless people. He agreed to be interviewed in exchange for some food.

I asked Sibo if the drugs were on his person. He said no. So I asked him if it was possible to take me to where the drugs were kept. He thought about my question, and then reluctantly said, ‘I don’t want to expose myself to any danger.’ So I promised him another R50. He then took me to the place, saying ‘I trust you. Money and food are really important to me because people living on the streets are really poor. I need to take your offer.’ Sibo does not carry the drugs on his person in case the police apprehend him. Whenever he has a client, he takes the client to a safe place or fetches the hidden drugs. This is one of the modus operandi in Long Street.

Street people often struggle to find a safe place to sleep. Some will sleep in pairs to prevent theft while asleep, but others prefer to sleep alone. Photo: Shusuke Tsuto

Sibo says his main customers are white people ranging from 25–40 years old. In Cape Town, the drugs are cheap and you can get high for just R100 per gramme of weed, R400 per gramme of cocaine and R250 per gramme of tik.

While talking about the drug business, we bought KFC and made our way to the safe place. He suddenly stopped and started to talk to two guys in isiXhosa. The safe place was in an apartment just 10 metres away from an intersection in Long Street and the two guys standing at the entrance were guarding the area. Sibo asked them if he could show me the inside. The guards said no, I was not allowed access.

Sibo’s life has things in common with most of the other homeless people I interviewed. Most had lost their parents at some point and their parents had issues with crime, drugs, alcohol and sex. Another aspect is that they dropped out from school for various reasons (such as difficulty in paying school fees; bad behaviour, begging on the streets and getting pregnant). In some people get support from the government or other relatives, but some people cannot find a job and end up on the streets.

Cristo’s story

Cristo* sometimes sleeps at a shelter for the homeless at a cost of R20 per night. At an intersection next to the Garden’s MyCiti bus station, he shows his shelter card to people waiting in their cars at the traffic lights and asks for money. ‘I need money to go to the shelter,’ he says a few hundred times a day.

The new skatepark in front of Gardens is part of the city’s gentrification initiative that revamped the wasted land under the Jutland Avenue Bridge into a socially productive area. Gentrification is generally conceptualised to exclude homeless people, however, sometimes it works to attract street people too. According to Cristo, the creation of the skatepark swept away the homeless people who used to live there. However, he is still there. He says: ‘Watchmen and other beggars are the two factors that I consider when choosing a spot.’ The redevelopment of the area provided him with a perfect spot where there are not any other homeless people and fewer watchmen.

Cristo does not occupy the space around the skatepark alone, I also found Nathan* sleeping close by. Nathan says: ‘I don’t like to be with so many people while I am sleeping. In the past, people have stolen my stuff while I was sleeping.’ The fear of theft is concomitant with sleeping on streets. Thus, some of the homeless prefer to be alone or just one partner in order to reduce the risk of theft. For such people, gentrification is more than welcome. It clears away a group of homeless people, and now there are fewer people sleeping there.

Cristo makes money through begging and selling merchandise. He begs for money at an intersection next to Gardens, an intersection in Bree Street and sometimes in Long Street. He also makes money at the deck of Cape Town Station where he sells merchandise. Before going to the deck, he bought two pictures of Jesus at a cost of R5 each at a shop. He tried to sell them to stall-owners and passengers in mini buses for R10 each. Eventually, he sold them to stall-owners on the deck for R7 each, making R4 profit in total.

Policeman walking along Cape Town station.

The police are aware of the presence of dealers at the deck of Cape Town station, but there are difficulties in apprehending them. Photo: Shusuke Tsuto

Cristo has enough money to stay in the shelter and also to buy drugs and food. Apparently, he has nothing better to do besides asking for money for now. It seems some homeless people like Cristo can actually make money. Later on, when I met with him on the deck of Cape Town Station, he told me that he got caught by police and was charged with disturbing the traffic. He needed to pay a fine of R100. He paid this, which shows he has more money than he lets on.

Cristo’s apprehension by the police does not stop him from going back there. He told me, ‘I cannot go back there now. But I will wait and see when I can go back to the spot.’ His answer calls into question the effectiveness of the police in relation to the homeless people who have found their spots.

On the deck of Cape Town station, he said he would show me how to get and use crystal methamphetamine better known as tik. The price was unexpectedly cheap. It costs R25 for a sachet of tik, and R10 for the pipe, a device used to inhale the tik. ‘I’ll show you how to smoke this,’ he said. He took me to a portable toilet at a construction site. In the cubicle, he opened the sachet of tik and put it in the pipe. He took out a lighter and lit the tik. The drug became liquid and started to give off smoke, which he inhaled. ‘Drugs are something that gives me excitement. When I don’t have anything to do and when I feel lonely, I smoke cigarettes or drugs,’ he said while smoking. Then he noticed that a construction worker was looking at him through a small window of the toilet from outside. So he stopped.

Later on, I asked a police officer on the deck if police were aware of the presence of drug dealers and users. The officer said they were aware of the dealers, pointing his finger in their direction, ‘But even if we try to arrest them, they just swallow the drugs and we cannot do anything.’

Sarah & Suzi’s story
Sarah* (32), and Suzi* (24), sleep in a squatting camp in Bo-Kaap. This community is established on an abandoned piece of land in a dilapidated house. We walked up a hill to Bo-Kaap from Long Street at 9:00pm. It was completely dark. I could only see small shack-like houses and a big house. With a torch from a cheap Nokia phone, I started the investigation of the big house under the careful supervision of Sarah and Suzi, who live in one of the rooms. But I could not see much.

Later on, I visited the area again. This time, I could see approximately 15 shacks. In this community, the quality of living is higher than that of Sibo, Cristo, Nathan and other homeless people I interviewed. This is because food sharing, social capital and daily housekeeping is practised. Often, homeless people outside the community ask to join the community. In this case, the members discuss the issue with everyone and consider the personalities, dangers and intentions of those who would like to join. If the new homeless person is considered not to be reliable, he or she cannot stay.

I asked a resident if she experienced a different level of crime in the community compared to that on the streets. She immediately responded: ‘No, I don’t fear crime here. We know each other and support each other in whatever way we can.’

However, not all homeless people are able to live in a secure community. A few people living in the community have registered their shacks with the local government, but others have not because they cannot afford to. If the shacks are not registered and law enforcement gives an eviction order, they must leave.

Although they have no toilets and encounter many difficulties in the community, the people who live there have a home and friends, which is much better than being on the streets. Nevertheless, the perspective of the homeless remains harsh: ‘Life here is hard. I want to have a better life,’ a resident told me.

The issues of homelessness and crime are a continuous encumbrance to any society. In order to develop adequate policies to solve these issues, an analysis of the wider socio-economic, political and cultural contexts is essential. During my interaction with street people, I began to understand a lot about their lives – how some survive by selling drugs, how gentrification can attract homeless people and the difference between life in a community compared to life on the streets. Although often perceived as a nuisance, witnessing the fighting human spirit of these homeless folk was fascinating and, above all, commendable.

*All names have been changed

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