City has abandoned the homeless
“I will give you a talisman. Whenever you are in doubt, or when the self becomes too much with you, apply the following test. Recall the face of the poorest and the weakest person whom you may have seen, and ask yourself, if the step you contemplate is going to be of any use to them. Will they gain anything by it? Will it restore them to control over their own life and destiny? Then you will find your doubts and your self melt away.”
This famous quote from Mahatma Gandhi from the end of his life would be a useful guide for our politicians to use. My fear instead is that the talisman they use is more like this:
“Whenever you are fearful, or when the self becomes all you care about, apply the following test. Recall the face of your political masters or how your own face will look on TV or in the papers. And ask yourself, if the step you contemplate is going to be of any use to your career. Then you will find your self completely takes over and you can comfortably forget the people you are meant to serve.”
The self-serving nature of many of our politicians is now so commonplace that we take it for granted. We actually forget that they work for us, that they are funded by us, that they are there to serve us. We stand when they enter the room as if they were our masters; whereas, in a democracy, we are their masters and they should be standing for us.
Christians who have just celebrated Easter are shown a model of leadership by Jesus when he becomes a servant and washes the feet of his own disciples. In fact, all good religions promote the idea of servant leadership (even if not all religious leaders live up to this!).
The coolness with which politicians show disrespect for the electorate is never more evident than in an election campaign. I see one aspect of this in my work with homeless people at the Denis Hurley Centre but similar examples can be found in all areas of our public life.
Homelessness is evidently a large and growing problem in central Durban. The combined effect of Covid-19, riots, floods and inner-city decline means that we now have about 50% more homeless people than four years ago, probably about 6 000. (Though note that this is less than the over-inflated figure that the Municipality claimed for questionable reasons based on a bogus and unsubstantiated survey).
Given the size of the problem, and its particularly visibility in a city reliant on tourist income, you would have expected the Mayor to care about it and want to take some strategic action. Certainly, his counterparts in Johannesburg, Tshwane and Cape Town have all engaged with the issue and even produced some sensible policies.
But neither the current Mayor nor Deputy Mayor have shown any interest at all. In fact, a letter signed by 36 organisations requesting the reinstatement of the eThekwini Task Team on Homelessness (which was so effective during lockdown) was completely ignored. Six months later there has been no reply.
I was therefore surprised to see that later this week the Mayor is hosting an ‘Open Day’ on Homelessness. Eight weeks to go before the election perhaps he thinks the ANC should do something. Or rather he thinks they should be seen to be doing something. No doubt the media will be present. And some seniors from the Party checking up on him.
But what impact is an ‘open day’ actually going to make on the lives of those it claims to be helping? They will get some food (though some of us are involved in feeding homeless people every day of the year) and people may walk away with smart T-shirts bearing political slogans (paid for with ratepayers money). They will be given ‘advice’ but what use is advice if there are no real services or solutions on offer?
There is a small group of dedicated organisations in central Durban already serving homeless people week in and week out. We do what we can with the limited resources that we have and receive almost no help from Government.
The municipality on the other hand has enormous resources – remember that they spent R1.7M last year to honour their “hard working employees”! So if the Mayor does want to help the homeless he needs to do more than just attempt to duplicate the services offered by NGOs or worse still create expectations which are left to NGOs to follow up after his team have left.
At the Diakonia Good Friday service last week, despite weeks of planning and formal requests, the Municipality completely failed to deliver even the simplest of tasks: providing chairs and sound system needed for the service.
The Mayor who was present ran around and retrieved a few dozen chairs from inside City Hall – hardly enough for a crowd of 600. Is this how our city is run? No planning, no forethought, no analysis of a problem – just a knee jerk reaction once the cameras are pointed and then all forgotten once the media have gone away? Every resident deserves better than that. And most especially those of our fellow citizens who are the most vulnerable and most marginalised.
Dr Raymond Perrier
Director, Denis Hurley Centre
