Today the City of Cape Town will carry out yet another displacement, removing more than 120 people who are already displaced and living on the streets in the CBD.
A “caring city” should be preoccupied with providing long-term, effective interventions for people. Instead, our City is preoccupied with displacing and removing people. Until this changes, homelessness will keep harming the most vulnerable among us, including our elderly, sick and disabled, and young men escaping violence in the Cape Flats.
After the high court granted this latest eviction order – only after mandating that the City make its shelter system “more humane and constitutionally compliant” – I visited several areas in the CBD to talk to some of the people being affected.
Each person has a different story, but their experience on our streets involves the same appalling treatment. The reality is that our City’s approach is overwhelmingly punitive and reactive – and failing.
There is a long-standing history of abuse, harassment and violence against people on the streets at the hands of the City, law enforcement, SAPS, Central City Improvement District and private security. I have spoken to people whose wrists and ankles have been broken by law enforcement officers. These same officers are also being threatened and intimidated by their principals, pressured to be seen “taking charge”.
‘Skop en donner’
For years, our mayors have deployed a strategy of displacement and removal of those who are trapped in homelessness, what I call a “skop en donner” approach.
When Helen Zille “oversaw the construction of Cape Town’s largest relocation camp, Blikkiesdorp in Delft”, people were rounded up and removed. Patricia de Lille continued displacing people, this time to Wolwerivier. In 2020, Dan Plato oversaw the disastrous Strandfontein relocation camp, where people’s human rights were grossly violated.
Safe Spaces are not humane and they are definitely not designed to help people get off the streets.
With mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis, the same strategy continues, albeit with softer language and better PR. Not only has he displaced hundreds of people in horrific removals, such as in Green Point, but behind the scenes he is actively trying to strip vulnerable people of their rights. Just last month the City was rebuked by the high court for seeking an unlawful, sweeping interdict that would deny people their constitutionally protected rights against unjust eviction. The judge also criticised the City’s dehumanising language when he “took exception to the City referring to those living on the streets as criminals”.
As Daily Maverick recently reported, the conditions at the City’s so-called Safe Spaces are utterly degrading. People are exposed to the elements, getting rained on, living in rat- and lice-infested quarters with overflowing toilets, some poisoned by the meals handed out to them. These conditions are meant to be better than a warm tent of your own?
Read more:
‘A travesty of human rights’ — Cape Town shelter occupants tell of degrading conditions
Watch: Cape Town’s Safe Space One – secure shelter or ‘travesty of human rights’?
Cold reality – many of us are closer to living on the street than we think
The mayor calls these spaces “dignified”. If he really believes this, I invite him to come with me and spend even three days at one of his Safe Spaces. They are not humane and they are definitely not designed to help people get off the streets.
We should all want to know how many people the City has helped out of homelessness – especially considering the many millions being spent. The City offers up arbitrary statistics such as the number of referrals social workers have made. Can they provide even 50 names of people they’ve supported – people who are now living in their own home, employed, healthy, connected with family? This is the only metric that matters.
Seeking safety and a better life should never make a person homeless, but this is the reality today.
I don’t believe they can provide any such evidence because their “caring” approach isn’t working. Years of evidence suggest that the City’s ultimate goal is not to help people – it’s to remove them from public view.
It’s up to the caring citizens among us to insist that the City treat people humanely and start implementing long-term, sustainable solutions. Our people need to be safely housed in transitional homes that mirror close-knit family networks, where they can work consistently and one-on-one with social workers to overcome their specific problems.
We also need to be asking why people end up homeless in the first place, and start dealing with the root causes of homelessness.
Where I live in Beacon Valley, Mitchells Plain, gun violence and gangsterism are pushing our young men out of the area and into homelessness in the city centre. Seeking safety and a better life should never make a person homeless, but this is the reality today.
On the Cape Flats, we work from a tough place. But we’ve also learnt a deeper sense of appreciation for each other. If I know anything after 26 years of doing this work, it is that the only way to make a lasting change is to treat people with dignity, compassion, and care – real care.
It’s time we demand that the City change course and end this legacy of injustice. We will all be better off when it does. DM