Forgotten, homeless

They are society’s ignored people. Their existence dismissed at robots and street corners by people who care less to even look them in the eye. These are the homeless, the poor and broken, who cannot afford a roof over their head ... the very men and women who need the most from President Cyril Ramaphosa.

And nothing has changed for them since Ramaphosa’s New Dawn Thuma Mina (send me) speech, said Valencia, who doesn’t want to give her last name. Valencia still has pride and doesn’t want everyone to know that she lives on the street.

Immaculately groomed, her short hair plastered neatly to her proudly held head, her scarred face carried the weight of her 23 years on the street. She’s part of a group of five, enjoying a mid-morning beer in the stifling Cape Town summer heat.

“For how many years we’ve been voting? To vote is nothing to us homeless people because we get nothing,” Valencia said.

In her younger days, circa 1996, Valencia used to stand by robots and ask people for something to eat. “Other people, they give, other people they don’t give.

“To wash now, at least we get some place there in The Carpenter’s Shop to wash ourself and at times to wash our washing [sic].”

The Carpenter’s Shop is a nongovernmental organisation (NGO) providing the approximately 7 383 homeless adults with “a range of critical basic services and social care interventions”. Of that number “almost 1 000 live on the streets of Cape Town’s CBD and the City Bowl [City Of Cape Town, Street People Research 2014-15]”, the NGO states on its website.

A block away Andrew Wallace, Dorothy Bester, and Patrica Geyser display mostly women’s clothing, seemingly vintage in style and material.

Display is a misnomer, however. It’s spread over the pavement and sold by the three to raise money for themselves to survive.

The trio all complain of the same problem as Valencia’s group: being harassed by local police.

Last year, homeless people were left alone to sleep on benches outside parliament and on nearby sidewalks.

This year, the entire shutdown area appeared to have been swept clean of detritus – human and otherwise.