‘It’s terrible. I forgot what sleep is like’
● David Nkopane thumbs the coins in the palm of his hand, the meagre yield of the generosity of strangers.
In the baking summer heat, he cuts an unusual figure as he works his traffic-lights pitch in Bryanston, going from car to car in his best clothes — including a collar and tie.
“If people can see you dress nicely, they will know you care about your work and maybe someone will give me a job,” said Nkopane, 34.
He will spend Christmas alone in a oneroom shack in Diepsloot, far from his real home in rural Lesotho and his twin sons, Thabo and Thabang, aged seven.
Nkopane left his village of Leribe in the mountain highlands in 2005, coming to SA in search of work.
But the soft-spoken father soon found himself living on the streets. For five years, he slept beneath bridges and trees.
Now he makes just enough from handouts to keep a roof over his head.
“I miss [my sons] so much and I wish I could go home to be with them,” he said this week. “The last time I was able to go home and see them was two years ago.”
A 2008 study by the Human Sciences Research Council found there were 200,000 homeless people across SA.
“It was very tough,” Nkopane says of his years of sleeping on the streets.
“You are not safe, and you always need to know if people are coming to steal your things, they will stab you for nothing.
“When it’s raining it is terrible. For the years that I was sleeping on the street, I forgot what sleep is like,” he said.
Jon Hopkins, COO of the faith-based NGO U-turn, which helps the homeless, said reliable figures were dated but it was clear that more and more people were living on the street.
“The problem is challenging because of limited housing for the poor, a growing unemployment rate and an education system that is floundering,” he said.
Hopkins said Christmas was a bleak time for those living on the street.
“The majority of people on the streets do not have families, or [they] come from families where there is a history of addiction or abuse. They feel isolated from society and the community that surrounds them,” he said.
Nkopane, determined never to go back to street life, counts his takings at the end of the day — some of the money goes towards rent, some he uses for taxi fare to get to his panhandling spot in Bryanston and some he spends on food. If he has anything left, he sends it to his family.
Zama Ndlovu, of outreach group Mould, Empower, Serve (MES), said the homeless were invisible, and more so at Christmas when people gathered with their families
“Unfortunately, there is no Christmas for the homeless. This is why they are often referred to as the ‘invisible community’.”
She said that with SA’s current overwhelming economic pressures, drifting into homelessness was a real danger for those in the grip of poverty.
“With the low levels of savings in the country, when people lose their jobs there is a chance that they will lose their home next. If they do not have a strong support structure, it is fairly easy for them to end up on the streets,” she said.
For Nkopane, his support structure is far out of reach.
“I am a long way from home. I haven’t seen my wife and my children for two years. I know that I will not see them for this Christmas, but maybe next year,” he said.