IMAGINE THE MISERY OF HOMELESSNESS

EVERY time I travel to Muizenberg (which I do quite often), I see the little group of homeless people sheltering under the railway bridge, huddled in their scraps of blanket and cardboard, trying to keep warm and relatively dry, and I realise just how lucky I am to have a safe, warm place of my own to come home to.

I can’t imagine how miserable it must be to have no roof over your head, no running water, no toilet, no food or money.

Not far from that bridge there’s an unused block of apartments and I sometimes wonder whether it could be used to provide better shelter for those poor homeless souls under the bridge.

It appears to be standing empty, but I realise there are probably many sound reasons why it remains vacant.

Somebody must have invested a lot of money in the building and isn’t about to hand it over to vagrants who can’t afford rent.

Our beautiful country is full of injustices like that. Many of us think we have solutions. “They should ...”, we say, but we’re not sure who the “they” are.

Maybe the root problem with our country is that there are too many “Theys” and not enough “Us”. We love classifying ourselves. We say we’re ANC or Jewish or Muslim or English, Xhosa or Zulu or whatever, but forget we’re South Africans first – or should be.

Even those in the same group tend to divide themselves into factions. Taxi operators provide a good service but their members are split into rival factions ready to kill each other. Why?

We tend to blame many of our social ills on “the Apartheid legacy” – a time when we were forcibly divided. I believe it’s high time we put that behind us and started a new legacy.

A good stew contains many different ingredients – meat, potatoes, onions, carrots etc. Each might be quite bland on its own, but adds to the flavour of the meal. Maybe we should try to combine all our flavours and cook up a delicious new South Africa.

Last Laugh

A woman came into the office of an insurance company and said: “I insured the barn on my farm for R50 000 and it burned down. I’ve come to collect the R50000.“

“It doesn’t work like that, madam,” said the clerk.

“Before we can pay out we have to have an assessment of exactly how much the barn was worth.”

The woman thought for a moment and then said: “In that case I’d like to cancel the policy I took out on my husband.”