The earliest memory I have of interacting with a Homeless Talk vendor is one of fear-laced irritation. Rosebank’s snarled traffic was sufficiently irritating — I did not need this moral dilemma on my otherwise spotless conscience. All my years of ‘free Mandela†rallies and cups of vile coffee at leftist university seminars counted for naught in the face of this infernal person. Just as I was about to yield to a mixture of menace and pity, I was saved by the green light.
I soon forgot about that encounter until I was heading home one night, a few months later. I found myself lost, and panicking, in Bryanston. Eventually I saw the first human being in what seemed hours. Clearing my throat, and mustering some courage, I asked, ‘Could you please tell me where the nearest service station is?†He stopped a metre away, probably thinking I must be one of those bored paedophiles looking for some rough. ‘Do you want a newspaper?†he asked, sensing his chance to make up for a poor day’s sale. I scooped a handful of coins from the coin holder and offered them to him, pleading for directions. He dipped into the pocket of his fading yellow bib to retrieve a bundle of loosely ordered pages. Not caring to count the coins he put them into his pocket, threw the newspaper into my lap, turned and ambled away. His quota met for the day, he picked up a plastic bag and, not missing a step or looking in my direction, said, ‘go straightâ€.
True to his word, half a mile on was an Engen. It struck me that my reluctant knight had much more lucrative options than plying Homeless Talk newspapers. In any case, why did people pay money for something they did not want to read and that was so badly marketed?
Two years and a bit on, I am leading the rejuvenation of Homeless Talk as its chairperson. Our raison d’être is to provide the vendors with a means of generating an income and our writers with the chance to hone their skills. We have to produce a better product more efficiently. Renaming the publication signals not only a broader universe of interests, but starts to shift the basis of the relationship with our customers away from charity towards an exchange of value. In choosing the new name HT News, we retain a link with the past while signalling this new focus.
Once we have sorted the key operational challenges we must spread our wings, entering new metropolitan areas, recruiting more vendors, spreading the opportunity for more to make an honest living. And once we are established in Tshwane, Cape Town and Durban, fortnightly at first, we hope to go weekly. Financial sustainability must marry operational efficiency.
But who are we going to sell this stuff to? For northern-suburbs dwellers, 99% of our customers, Homeless Talk is a charity play. While we are grateful for this crucial custom, we have begun to reshape the editorial to make it more readworthy. Old habits die hard and this relationship will take time to re- orient, allowing us the opportunity to build new audiences. We have never really focused on the stakeholders residing and working in the metro. What do they need? How can we help the myriad nationalities huddled in Yeoville and Berea to integrate better into the new South Africa? And what of the multitude enduring taxi and train rides into the city each day? Can we not deliver them some value too? By December 2008 we hope to have more than 1 000 vendors in the four largest metros, 300% more than we have now. Better trained, better presented.
Kojo Parris, chairperson of Homeless Talk, is a former investment banker engaged in promoting social private equity as an asset class