”Kapok or snow, it’s all the same for us, baba,” remarks Xolani Khwinana, a scruffy 18-year-old from Zamimpilo squatter camp, west of Johannesburg.
Despite being situated under long electric power lines, the settlement has remained powerless for more than 10 years. There are only five communal water taps serving hundreds of families and about 30 communal lavatories.
Crime, rape, murder, disease and poverty have found homes in Zamimpilo, while its squatters wait for the promised ”better life for all”.
Khwinana lives in a one-roomed, windowless shack with his four siblings and parents. Since 1996 the Khwinana family from Mdantsane, Eastern Cape, has survived harsh Highveld winters and storms, despite a lack of electricity, running water and proper sanitation.
”I am telling you skhokho [boss], this weekend Bosmont cemetery will be very busy with funerals from Zamimpilo,” Khwinana quips. ”People here die everyday of Aids, my friend, some hang themselves in the shacks, but this week, I think we’ll die of this snow,” he says.
Khwinana’s mother runs a shebeen and chisanyama (township restaurant) business, while his father hops from one security-guard job to another due to low-paying employers. When days are dark, he says, his two younger siblings often walk to school in Soweto, 8km away.
This is the typical lifestyle of thousands of people living in Zamimpilo. The women stay at home and run miniature stalls, selling fruits and veggies, sweets and loose cigarettes, sometimes even spotja (marijuana). The newest trend among them is to stock the latest editions of Homeless Talk and sell them at R4 a copy at Jozi’s main road intersections.
Maria Hlatana (32), also hails from the Eastern Cape. She lives with her five-year-old daughter. Her shack has become the meeting place of abo mama be homeless (homeless mothers), who come there after a day of trade at the road intersection.
”Brother, believe me, yesterday I only made R15 because I left my spot early. When it started drizzling I thought of my daughter all alone in the shack,” says Hlatana, warming herself from the flames of a blazing coal brazier.
Hlatana’s daughter has been coughing for days now and the nearest clinic is a two-hour walk away. ”I have to wake up very early tomorrow to walk to Riverlea Extension clinic so that I beat the queues,” she says.
”I could never stay at home [in the Eastern Cape]. In fact, my family chased me away to come here and look for a job. Things are even worse back there,” she says.
The men wake up in the wee hours of the morning to look for hard-to-find jobs as abumantshingilani (security guards) and abumashanyela (street sweepers). Most of them cannot read or write, making finding even menial jobs extremely difficult. ”Life is kak [crap] my friend … you are black, you know,” says John, a Mozambican immigrant, whose dream of making it in the big city was never realised.
”This morning I could not believe my eyes,” he says, laughing and coughing painfully at the same time. ”The whole section covered in white.
”I have never seen snow in my life. Maputo is hot always, but problem is no money, no work,” he says in bits of broken English and Zulu. ”I wish I were there today and come back after snow,” he says, holding a plastic gallon container under the only functioning communal tap. All the other taps froze overnight.
Khwinana says he dropped out of school in the 10th grade and swears he ”will never go back”. He says his family’s problems keep on escalating, for-cing him to look for ways to help out.
”I was not a domkop [stupid], but I was slow. And I did not like the school that I went to; it was not nice,” he says. ”I am happier now because I have my own sweets business and I chill with amagenge [pals] all day.” Most of his friends are jobless and spend most of the day ”smoking zol”.
Khwinana dreams of a safer neighbourhood, ”with a park and crèche for children” and a ”carwash for us, the big dogs”. He says if government responded to the people’s pleas, the rate of rape and murder in Zamimpilo’s narrow passages would drop.
”My dreams and wishes are not selfish. Even if I go back to school and university — when I come back all these people will still be suffering. I want good things for everybody, not only for me and my family.”