Nonhlanhla Ndlovu, Rapula Moatshe and Zelda Venter
Pretoria - Women, often stranded in a foreign country trying to survive every day on the streets with their children in order to feed themselves and their kids, have become a familiar face in Pretoria.
Their livelihoods are centred on street begging, relying on the generosity of motorists, shopkeepers as well as people who are passing by to help them with food and money.
Sheilla Dube is a 37-year old mother of two from Zimbabwe, who makes a living by trying to get handouts on the corner of a street in Centurion.
She came to South Africa in search of a better life for herself and her two boys whom she is raising alone.
She was working as a domestic worker in Pretoria North until she fell pregnant with her last born and her boss fired her. She was told by her employer that no children were wanted in the yard, and that was when she started begging on the streets.
She told the Pretoria News: “Living on the streets is not easy because some days you go the whole day without eating anything and there’s nothing you can do.
“After I lost my job, I went to the Pretoria CBD and I met another woman from Zimbabwe. She taught me how to make a living through begging on the streets and that is how I started.”
Dube is residing in Centurion and sleeps under shading next to a fuel station for safety.
“I am looking for a job so that I can make enough money to go back home because I do have a passport; I just don’t have money to go back. At least I tried here in South Africa, but I want my children to go back to school, I am tired of living like this.”
She said when you live on the streets you see a lot of bad things happening.“You see traumatic accidents before your eyes, and you see people being killed and mugged. It is dangerous and disturbing for me and my child,” Dube said.
City of Tshwane’s Social Development MMC Peggy de Bruin has meanwhile expressed concern about the number of people spotted at traffic lights on a daily basis begging for money or food.
In the Centurion area they had received concerns from some motorists and residents that the number of beggars was increasing almost every day.
De Bruin said there were ongoing talks with relevant departments such as Community Safety about the plight of the beggars.
For example, she said, the City was mindful of the fact that if beggars are removed from the streets they would have to be taken to shelters for the homeless.
“We are having a talk about that and it is going to take different departments to deal with the situation. The departments such as community safety and social development,” she said.
She also told the Pretoria News that the City did have shelters for the homeless.
Louise du Plessis of Lawyers for Human Rights (LHR) said it is a complicated problem with many aspects. “Nobody wants to see children on the corner of a street. But we believe sometimes these parents just can’t afford to place their children in a crèche or at a place of safety while they try to get some money to put food on the table.
“We wish municipalities can step in and create more crèches like the one in Marabastad.
“It really caters for the children of these mothers and if it was not for this crèche, these children would have stayed at home under horrible circumstances, without their parents who are out hustling to get some money,” Du Plessis said.
The actions of the City of Tshwane more than a decade ago made headlines at the time when Metro Police officers raided some of the parents begging in town. They simply removed some of these children and LHR had to step in to defuse the situation by way of court action.
The three-year-old daughter of a shoemaker was simply taken away from him, kicking and screaming. This is as the officials believed her father was begging with her at his side. It turned out that he was mending shoes and took her along to “work” each day, as there was no one to look after her at home.
The organisation represented him in court to get his daughter back.
Following this, a judge in 2011 declared certain sections of the Children’s Act unconstitutional which allowed the authorities to simply remove these children from their parents or caregivers, without making provision for a court to speedily review the removal.
As the law stood, the authorities could in a case of emergency remove the children and place them in a place of safety.
Social workers then had 90 days to turn to court for the removal of the children to be declared justified or not. The court at the time said the act should provide that the case of these children could be brought to court within 48 hours.
The Constitutional Court, tasked with confirming this order or not, in 2012 confirmed that the act failed to provide for the automatic review of the removal of children from their family environment and their placement in temporary safe care by state officials.
The majority of justices held that while the provisions were aimed at catering for the best interests of children in accordance with the Constitution, there were insufficient safeguards.
For instances where the police officer or social worker was wrong in removing a child from his or her family, or where the Children’s Court made an order for the removal of a child on incorrect evidence.
It held that the appropriate remedy was to read into the sections the requirement that all removals under the act be reviewed by the Children’s Court soon after the removal has taken place.
Pretoria News