Hazel Friedman
ARMSTRONG BADUZA (52) recalls the day Archbishop Trevor Huddleston arrived at his father’s house in Soweto armed with musical instruments. “I was too young to play but those who managed became international stars,” he says. “I became a wandering star instead.”
He also remembers his father leading the residents of Alexandra Township — then a freehold area — on the historic rent boycott in the 1950s. “He marched with the people to Masaka which later became Moroka in Soweto, where they built a shanty town in protest against the government. My father was a leader of the homeless. That’s why they banned him.”
But proud memories of his father are soon replaced by recollections of crime-filled days and and cold nights numbed by dagga and booze. “My father was called Baduza of the shacks. I was known as Half-and-half, because I used to buy half-a-jack brandy and half-a- dozen beers … if I hadn’t got sick with ulcers, I would have been an alcoholic.”
Since the age of 17, the son of Shreiner Baduza — an African National Congress activist and committed communist until he became a priest — has had a street-eye view of life. The only home he has known, apart from brief spells at his father’s house and longer stretches in prison, is the Johannesburg’s Drill Hall and Park Station, where he now sleeps.
Soon, when it undergoes refurbishment, he will be forced to leave. “I am fearful because there is nowhere else for me to go. But at least I have a job.”
Baduza is one of the writers for Homeless Talk, a publication written and sold by the homeless and produced in partnership with St George’s United Church, Central Methodist Mission and the Central Johannesburg Partnership.
He is also the paper’s sales manager and represents the street sellers on the editorial board. This is Baduza’s first job, apart from a stint as an hospital orderly, which he had to leave “because if I didn’t, I would never have stopped stealing from the hospital.”
But how did the child of one of South Africa’s most famous sons end up destitute? “I didn’t want to learn. I hated politics and religion. I wanted freedom, but my father was very strict. He used to tell me money was dirty. But that was what I wanted. And fast cars.”
He recalls the time he stole a car and drove it to show his father. “I stopped myself because I was wanted by the police and I knew he was ashamed of me.”
When his mother died in the Transkei, he stole money to attend her funeral. He arrived too late. Ten years ago, when his father passed away, Baduza was in prison. His voice falters, then becomes more measured.
In the muted light filtering through the stained glass windows of St George’s chapel, Baduza looks serene. He has the eyes of a priest who has seen too much pain. And he writes with the passion of a prophet about the homeless and the need for education, his achingly beautiful prose peppered with humorous anecdotes and quotes from the scriptures. “I only went up to standard three, and my mother knew I would never be educated, so she taught me to read the Bible. I also read James Hadley Chase.”
And there are anecdotes. One of Baduza’s friends, Linda Bakwana, has exposed the homeless gangsters who exploit “their own kind” by charging R5 per person to sleep at the army’s Drill Hall. “Luckily I left before they killed me. Now apparently they force people to pay R50 for a tiny space.”
He also recalls that “one day I was selling the newspaper in the street and this BMW bumped into me. Next thing the police come to ask me why I tried to hijack the madam!”
Another time he was collecting empty cans at at bus shelter. He leaned too close to an elderly woman, who clutched her handbag, yelling for help. “I was lucky I didn’t get into trouble. My friend was selling Homeless Talk and this rich, white couple got into an argument because the husband said he wasn’t homeless so he didn’t need our newpaper. The wife began to shout at him, so my friend said that he didn’t want the newspaper to a cause a divorce.”
“I have never been married, I don’t have children,” says Baduza. “But now I want to settle down, to help my people and be at peace. When I was a youngster, freedom was my food. But Jesus told Peter to feed his lambs with truth.”
And he adds: “Are the lambs of Jesus not the youngsters?”
Suddenly Armstrong Baduza, street kid-turned street-wise sage, sounds just like his