Weekend Argus (Saturday Edition)
City not picking on certain folk
Fining the homeless R500 won’t address poverty, gangsterism marring the Mother City’s facade
THE City of Cape Town said it had a special Street People Unit which assisted the homeless when they were in need of medical care.
Mayoral committee member for community services and health Zahid Badroodien said the unit often received requests for medical care from street people and it assisted with ambulance support. “We always encourage street people to attend City clinics during opening hours,” he said.
Weekend Argus took to the streets this week to find out from homeless people whether they used these health services. Homeless people made headlines this week following an outcry over the City’s decision to issue them with fines for by-law contraventions. Badroodien said the City allocated a budget, close to R700000, annually for street people programmes, including the City’s safe space for street people and the winter readiness programmes.
Mayco member for community safety JP Smith said officers applied the law equally to all citizens.
“All citizens accused of transgressing a by-law have the option of going to court and explaining their situation… note that fines are set by the Department of Justice, not the City,” he said.
Smith said the City had the responsibility to enforce by-laws, especially when acting on complaints. He said the relevant by-laws were the Streets, Public Places and the Prevention of Noise Nuisances by-law, 2007; and the Integrated Waste Management by-law. Transgressions ranges from obstructing pavements and starting fires in public places, to littering and dumping – and these transgressions applied to all people, not only the homeless.
He also denied that the issuing of fines showed the City was “uncaring”.
He said it was not illegal to be homeless, and street people were entitled to freedom of movement as outlined in the Bill of Rights.
However, street people were expected to abide by the laws of the country and city by-laws. Smith said in the first three months of this year, the Law Enforcement Displaced Persons Unit received 3051 complaints from the public about anti-social behaviour by street people. During the same period, the unit issued 199 fines for contraventions of by-laws.
The chief executive of the Haven Night Shelter, Hassan Khan, echoed Smith’s sentiments that anyone could be issued with a fine if they broke the City’s by-laws.
The Haven Night Shelter has been offering accommodation, bathing and clothing to the city’s homeless for the past 20 years. It has a bed capacity of 1200 and works with 32 other shelters spread out across the city.
“During our winter programme, we also make mattresses available and use all the available space to house more of the homeless. This does not mean we should turn a blind eye when laws are being broken,” he said.
At the Haven, the homeless receive free accommodation for the first 30 days and thereafter they have to complete chores for one hour per day should they wish to stay on.
THE SIGHT as the plane approaches Cape Town is always welcoming, especially to someone who was born in this city and who loves it dearly.
After you fly over the Hottentots Holland mountains, you see the winelands, then the sea and then, depending on which side of the plane you are in, you might see Robben Island and Table Mountain. It is beauty personified.
But as you approach the airport and after you get off the plane, you start to see another side of Cape Town as you drive past a series of informal settlements – a misnomer if ever there was one because most of these settlements have become permanent – and the Cape Flats townships, before you get to the city centre where many tourists start their experience of the beautiful Cape Town.
In between the beauty, there is a side of the city the authorities have been failing to deal with for years. The only way they know how to deal with the many homeless people on the city streets is to remove them, often forcibly, as media reports said this week.
But removing homeless people from our streets is not something new for the City of Cape Town.
Remember in 2010, ahead of the Football World Cup, the authorities removed all the homeless people from the city’s streets.
Now we hear that they have been fining homeless people R500 each time for obstructing pavements, and other such misdemeanours. It is not small change, even to people with money. How much more of a challenge must it be to someone who has nothing?
For many years the city’s slogan was “The city that works for you”. But if you asked most people on the Cape Flats they would say this should rather have been “The city that works for some”. The “some” are those who live in the leafy suburbs where they have become used to certain privileges.
One of the privileges is not having to be bothered by homeless people.
In a city and society that is as unequal as South Africa, one could be surprised that there are only a few hundred homeless people in the central business district. Someone joked that South Africa is leading the world in at least one thing, and that is inequality.
Cape Town, with all its beauty, is one of the most unequal societies in the world. Cape Town is also a very dangerous city, but the sheltered people who live in the suburbs and the tourists who hang out in the beautiful spots of the city are not affected by the dangers of gangland shootings, incessant violence, and drug abuse.
To those who live on the Cape Flats and who sometimes never get to leave their townships – often because they cannot afford the train, bus or taxi fare – the beauty of Cape Town is something they can only imagine.
Growing up in Hanover Park many years ago, it was not unusual for us to have only one or two outings a year out of the area. In December after my dad got his bonus, my mother would take us shopping in central Cape Town and sometime during the summer we would go to Kalk Bay beach.
Both excursions were by train which, surprisingly, might have been more reliable than it is today. We were among the lucky ones; many of my friends never left Hanover Park.
Homelessness and gangsterism are manifestations of the worst kind of capitalism, which is what we have in South Africa. The rich are very rich, the poor very poor. We will only be able to deal with it if we create more opportunities to lift people out of poverty. As long as we have this kind of inequality, homelessness will be with us. We cannot get rid of it by fining people or forcibly removing them.