A group of men sits huddled around a two-plate stove. They rub their hands, trying to stay warm; one eats porridge with a wooden spoon straight out of the pot. This is the end of the line for Johannesburg’s homeless, and every night between 500 and 800 people bed down in the halls of the Central Methodist church in Johannesburg’s inner city.
For many, this is their last safety net. If you’re homeless, where do you go when no one else will have you?
On Tuesday, groups of the homeless meet to discuss ways of eking out a living. Sitting in groups, some say they should start a car wash. Others suggest collecting cans, empty bottles and cardboard.
According to an informal survey conducted by the City of Johannesburg, 1 200 people live homeless on the streets of Johannesburg, but reliable figures are hard to come by.
Though nighttime temperatures dip as low as -2 degrees Celsius, many possess only a plastic sheet and some cardboard boxes to keep them warm. During the day, many store a bundle of clothes in drains or manholes.
Paballo ya Batho (seSotho for Caring for the People), an organisation based at the Central Methodist church, offers food and medical services to the homeless.
”We feed those who are completely outside on the dark streets,” says director Ndai Mncedisi.
Initially, only a handful of volunteers would go out every Wednesday evening with 10 loaves of bread and a bucket of soup to find and feed homeless people.
According to Mncedisi, the number of people on the street has now increased and the volunteers now give away 120 loaves of bread and ”a lot more” soup to the needy. Medication is now also offered to the homeless, administered by medical students from the University of the Witwatersrand.
At night, competition is fierce for pavement space. Hundreds bed down on the corners of Rissik and Plein streets and Loveday and De Villiers streets.
On May 30, Paballo ya Batho distributed 500 blankets at various homeless hot spots in the Johannesburg city centre.
”The sad part is we do not have a shelter. People sleep in the boardrooms and halls in the church, which is not meant for a shelter. We give them blankets and they sleep on the floor. In the nights and in the mornings it’s freezing. But at least they’re inside. In the mornings they have to help clean [in the church]. And they can be back at 6pm again,” says Mncedisi.
The church accommodates 500 to 600 people who have nowhere else to go at night. It also offers the homeless an opportunity to have a bath.
Many homeless people who spoke to the Mail & Guardian Online said they are chased out of public toilets when they try to wash themselves there.
For many a bath entails washing themselves in a gutter at night with cold water, says Tony (30), a homeless man who is waiting for the day his life on the streets would become a ”dim memory”. But, according to the City of Johannesburg, there are public bathrooms in Hillbrow, Yeoville and Albert Street that cater for the homeless who want to have a bath.
Paballo ya Batho volunteers come from all over the world, including Europe and the United States. ”They get emotional when they see people sleeping on the streets who are sick and old,” says Mncedisi. A debriefing session is held after each Wednesday-evening outreach session.
Saved from the streets
For Redwaan (19), a self-confessed drug addict from Cape Town, Paballo ya Batho has become his home after nearly six years of surviving on the streets.
He has now stopped taking drugs, and says the people at Paballo ya Batho give him hope to be a better person. He started living on the streets when he was 12 years old and has no idea who his parents are, whether they are alive or where they might be. He has taken the surname Johnson.
He says he tells people that his parents are dead, ”because I never gained that love of a parent and never got information about who they are”.
”It’s tough for me to say that I don’t know where my parents are. In life, I just want to finish my education and then get a proper job for myself and start searching for my family. They neglected me, but I will search for them. That is my dream. I’m trying to do my best,” he says.
While growing up, he lived in a succession of houses. ”People used to take care of me and let me work in their gardens to get food and the clothing that I wanted,” Redwaan says. ”Just to have that accommodation, I used to work for people, cleaning their garden, cleaning their houses and doing their washing for them.
”I wanted to go to school and one day when I was staying on the street, some people came and spoke to me. They told me that if I have a dream I should work on that dream and aspire to that what I dream about.
”I went to the principal of New Nation [school] and he said if I can get accommodation then I’m free to study,” he says.
Redwaan is currently in grade 11. Maths and science are his favourite subjects. ”It was hard for me to gain the education I wanted because I didn’t have those earnings to pay for it earlier.
”I got into school but now I’m struggling with books to write all my schoolwork down, so I can write my exams properly and know what I’m writing.”
Through its partnership with the Floc pre-school, which offers bursaries to children from homeless communities, Paballo ya Batho has committed to buy uniforms for some schoolchildren.
The official view
The City of Johannesburg has in the past year evicted squatters from various buildings in the inner city. On March 3, the high court ruled that the city could not evict residents of condemned buildings without providing alternative accommodation.
Judge Mahommed Jajbhay found that the city had failed in its statutory and constitutional obligations to provide a suitable plan of action for rehousing inner-city residents, and prevented it from carrying out the evictions.
”Our Constitution obliges the state to act positively to ameliorate these conditions,” he said. In terms of Section 26 of the Constitution, all people have the right to access to adequate housing and the state must take reasonable measures to achieve the progressive realisation of this fact, said the judge.
The City of Johannesburg has applied for leave to appeal.
Shaun O’Shea, city manager of marketing, communication and tourism for the inner city, says evictions are only carried out on the grounds of health and safety.
”The City of Johannesburg does not evict people just for the sake of eviction. The safety of all citizens is a priority for Johannesburg.
”The city conducts inspections, and notices are issued to owners of ‘slum buildings’ for failure to comply with health and safety by-laws. In many instances these are buildings that have been illegally converted … [that] have no management, [as well as] total infrastructure collapse due to unsanitary health conditions, safety issues and illegal electrical connections,” he says.
The number of buildings occupied illegally is on the decrease due to owners taking responsibility, he says. ”Problems do still occur when criminal elements take over buildings and prosper from exploitation of residents. [But] this is a matter for the South African Police Service [SAPS],” he adds.
O’Shea says that in the past, most evicted residents vacated the buildings prior to the eviction, but ”some aged [people] and children have been placed in shelters”.
When asked what the city is currently doing for its homeless, O’Shea replies: ”Our social services department’s social workers assist in assessing needs, counselling and placements [of the homeless] in city shelters.”
However, the city needs to take a look at sustainable solutions in terms of low-cost housing for the homeless, he says. ”But it’s not just up to us. We need to work together with the provincial departments, the SAPS and social services. It’s a collective effort. Non-governmental organisations [NGOs] in the private sector must also come on board.”
Various church groups and NGOs already run 13 shelters in the inner city, but more shelters are needed, says O’Shea.
Edna Mamonyane, spokesperson for the Johannesburg metro police, says that ”there are a lot of homeless children on the streets, especially in areas like Hillbrow”.
She says the metro police have suspended their operation of picking up the homeless and taking them to shelters for a couple of months. There are many dynamics that need to be considered before it will start again, she says.
In the meantime, Johnson and Johannesburg’s many other homeless people will continue to rely on help and food from shelters and organisations in the inner city. For people living on the street, this is their only lifeline. They have nowhere else to go.