Note: Since publishing the story Daily Maverick has been contacted with reports that the “Broken Man” is a con man. The evidence is welcome, and the story remains a personal example of the city’s overwhelming struggles that present challenges of agency in an unequal society. 

Past Trio Café on Greenway and the classic Mercedes dealership on the corner, a man approaches. The sun sets over the trees lining the Greenside street. His skin is weathered. Maybe he’s 35-years-old. His hair isn’t combed. He wears jeans tied with an old canvass belt, the tongue falling down his thigh. Under his trench coat he wears a T-shirt and a gold chain.

He shuffles into my path. “Brother, dear God, I’m Mozambican,” he says, just gums where his top teeth should be. “I need R400.”

“Askies,” I try to pass.

“They won’t help me because I’m Mozambican,” he continues. “I went to Joburg Gen and they said I must pay upfront.” I look at the ground, the cars passing, waiting for an opportunity to keep walking. Two people leave the small local supermarket.

I remember the two young men who followed me in town a month ago. As I quickened my pace they kept demanding money until they blocked my path and pulled a knife. I step back, hold my phone in my pocket, but the man doesn’t seem threatening. I don’t want to be rude so I wait for the chance to move on.

“They won’t help,” he says. “God says only you are good enough to listen.” I find myself thinking about his accent, wondering about the different inflections between Portuguese and English before realising I know nothing about Portuguese inflections.

He steps close and peels back the right cuff of his trench coat. There’s blood across his forearm and upper arm like an elbow guard. His arm is broken, the bones stretching the skin like spanners jammed into a sock.

In seconds he tells his story. His arm was broken in an accident that morning. He went to Charlotte Maxeke Hospital and was told that as a foreigner he needed to pay for treatment up front. He is homeless. He needs the R400 to go back to the hospital and fix his arm. He came to Greenside hoping people in the wealthy area would help, hoping I will help.

He lets the arm of the trench coat fall and again pleads for the money. During a pause, I ask myself: Should I take him to the hospital? I don’t have a car here. Should I withdraw the cash for him? I don’t want to lose R400 and have already spent most of my pay. I must know someone to call, I work on the issues of foreigners being denied services. But I can’t think of anybody.

“I just need help,” he begs, almost apologetically, lifting the arm of his coat again without wincing.

“I don’t have R400, I’m sorry.” I say “sorry” instead of “askies” this time as though it’s more genuine. I could go to the ATM and withdraw the money, but I don’t mention that.

“You need to go back to the hospital straight away and demand they look at your arm. They can’t just tell you to leave,” I say, uncertain about the laws on treating foreigners, but remembering the stories, interviews I have conducted, about foreigners, especially those without resources, who have been denied treatment.

“God hasn’t blessed me with people who will listen. It’s just you.”

“I’m sorry.”

I stare at his arm as though apologising to the blood and bones. I give him what’s in my wallet, R30 (is that even enough to get a taxi back to town and then to Joburg Gen?), and leave him standing there, the sun setting on the tree-lined street in Greenside, outside the classic Mercedes dealership.

I don’t get his name. I don’t know if he has a phone.

I hate this city, I say while drinking alone with money that could have helped. My thoughts race through a conversation I was having with myself when I used to spend days walking through the CBD. Like shadows that steal the sun in town, dreams of a life are subsumed here. Between the taxi ranks and the taverns, stalls and schools, everyone waits to survive. No one is at home. The beggars are like statues to the city’s loneliness and despair, monuments to the question, “I was here with such hope and promise … What happened?” We wander and work, for even not working is a full-time job, only for the city to steal our humanity.

I hate this city, I conclude.

I tick off justifications for leaving the man on the street: there are too many people who need help, you’d go broke helping them all. Where do you even start? I already work on issues trying to change the system. Maybe he was cheating me. The system is to blame, not me. But they’re just excuses and stronger are the questions: Would I have helped if he looked like me, white, of the same class? And most of all: why didn’t I at least do something?

I can’t answer. I list the options but don’t know what I’d do if I could replay the situation, as if life is pre-rehearsed. Drinking or ignoring it doesn’t help. I still can’t answer.

I know that I thought I was a better person. I thought I was a caring person. I know I need to question how I treat others, especially as the broken past of depravity lingers like alcohol in the air. It drives us to get more, hold onto what we have, flaunt it, retreat to enclaves, and wear suspicion like a jersey. I know that people need help, big or small, and we’re not helping.

What to do with a broken man?

After the sun had set, I went back to look for the Mozambican man. He was gone. DM

Photo: Early morning light catches railway carriages as they wait for the Monday morning rush hour at the Johannesburg station, South Africa, 18 November 2007. EPA/KIM LUDBROOK.