“THE whites are resentful of the changes that have taken place. If you ask them for money, they tell you to go and ask Mandela,” says S’busiso Nxele, an unemployed 24-year-old who lives on the streets.
For him not much has changed, except maybe the behaviour of the police. Pointing at the fire he’s lit to warm himself, he says: “We would not have been allowed to do this and the cops don’t chase us away anymore.”
Nxele says he can’t find a job; he still tries to earn a living parking cars in the city centre by day and in Yeoville’s Rockey Street at night. And his home is still a spot behind the derelict building where he lies near a fire on a cardboard box. He got as far standard seven before leaving school five years ago.
Does he think the government has done enough during its first 100 days in power?
“Has it been that long?” he asks. “It seems longer when you say the number of days, but it really has not been that long. We’ll wait and see. Maybe next year something will happen. I’m sure things will take some time. We cannot expect ‘tata’ (President Mandela) to change things overnight.”
Nxele says he is not concerned if whites have become resentful: “It is time they knew we are all human and if they don’t like that, they can sulk.” But he hopes that a time will come when “they realise we all have to live together”. – Sibusiso Nxumalo