‘I don’t want my daughter to see me on the street’

ON THE streets of Durban, Linda Khumalo is just another beggar. He hides his uncombed hair under a beanie which, like his tattered jeans and T-shirt, has not been washed in a while.

But when he goes home to Lindelani, he combs out his afro and puts on clothes washed at the sea. “I want to look like a man my daughter is proud to call ‘Daddy’.

“She is my saving grace. I never want her to see me on the street,” he says.

Khumalo is worried that as his 9-yearold daughter grows, it will become more difficult to ignore her questions about what he does for a living.

“For now this is the only way I can provide for her,” he said.

Khumalo makes about R70 a day begging on the streets.

After he buys food, he stashes the rest in “a special place” so that he can buy his daughter clothes and food when he is able to see her.

“There are things I can say I am ashamed of in my life, including being a beggar – but being a father is definitely not one of them. No matter how little I have or what a mess I’ve made of my life, I don’t want to cheat her out of the love of a father.”

Khumalo himself grew up in a loving home, but left when he fell out with his father and stepmother.

“I know that people see me here and think I must be a phara, uskotheni (vagrant) who is begging for whoonga money. I’m not. This is not a good life, it’s not the life I wanted for myself. Life just took a turn for the worse and I am doing what I can to survive.”

That turn in Khumalo’s life was a fight in school that saw him arrested, charged, convicted and sent to a juvenile centre for assault. When he got out on good behaviour after three years, he couldn’t go back to school because of his criminal record. Instead, he worked as a conductor on a bus until the bus owner sold his business.

“My daughter was the only thing that stopped me from turning to drugs when my life fell apart.”

When Khumalo feels down and out, he just remembers his daughter running to him when he arrives and clinging to him when he leaves. “I have experienced a lot of kindness on the street, and a lot of cruelty, too, but I know she will never reject me,” he says with certainty.

For Khumalo, Paper Money is a chance to do something he can be proud of and tell his daughter about.

“Linda the paper vendor, doesn’t that sound good, it will bring me the dignity I don’t have – and the pride to tell my daughter daddy works selling newspapers,” Khumalo said.