If the street is your home in Mthatha, you learn how to sleep with one eye open, expecting a vicious beating at every turn.
Some of the most set-upon homeless people live across the road from a leading provincial police station, Madeira, so they can sprint 30m from danger to safety.
Many, now in their 20s and 30s, are of the “born-free” generation, yet they grew up as children on these callous streets.
They say it is the municipal law enforcement officials who seamlessly conflate being homeless with criminality, and lay into them.
Thugs join in and prey on the homeless, attacking them as they sleep under cardboard and blanket scraps, robbing them of their last possessions.
Dispatch caught up with a group of homeless people sleeping in front of a shop directly opposite the Madeira police station.
Among them were two young women who said they slept on the streets. But “home” shifts constantly. They had to flee their previous spot on the bare, hard surface in front of a clothing store in York Road because the beatings from others were unbearable.
They hoped being close to the police station would offer some protection.
The group kept complaining about a security guard who was overly enthusiastic about using fist and boot on the homeless.
One of the women, who moved to the city from Ngcobo five years ago, said she had left her home to find a job in Mthatha. There was none and she descended to the streets.
The group collect cardboard boxes which they use to make rough beds and as insulation against the bitter cold.
They huddle up in their hovels and draw filthy blankets and scraps of material and plastic around them for cover.
You have to be a coward to survive. If you have money, you have to make sure that you spend all of it or else they will come and rob you
Qokolweni-born Mzwandile Madikane has been on the street for 25 years.
He said the death of his parents had left a divisive vacuum in the family. “Everyone wanted to be king.”
He worked as a car guard. Some days were brutal, but others earned him R80 a day.
The robberies, however, were constant. He spoke of the last four muggings, each time while he slept. Refusal to submit and hand over pennies or other precious goods led to blades being drawn and the victims were stabbed.
Surviving on the streets forged skills like cunning and deviousness.
“You have to be a coward to survive. If you have money, you have to make sure that you spend all of it or else they will come and rob you.”
Gcobani Qoyi, who left home in Gxulu, has been on the streets of Mthatha for 23 years.
He dropped out of school in grade 7 and decided to push trolleys. He was able to buy himself clothes and a new pair of takkies but the problem is that on streets, you cannot afford to look flashy or normal. Decent clothes have to be hidden.
“You literally have to sleep with one eye open,” he said.
Mvuyisi Gwadiso, 29, left home in Ngqeleni in 2010.
Ever the survivor, he turned trash into recycled materials and built his house from cardboard and plastic waste next to Soweto, a settlement near the BT Ngebs Mall.
This is a significant step up for someone who lived on the streets.
Sinethemba Qalinjova, 28, was also born in Ngqeleni and was doing so well at school that he thought he would go into business after finishing his studies.
But a horrible fate, about which he declined to speak, led to him being forced to live on the streets in Mthatha.
In a tragic comment, he said the family could not afford the fees and he had to abandon school in grade 11.
DispatchLIVE
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