Homelessness in Pretoria: Exploring the survival challenges of the homeless and their right to the city

ABSTRACT

This article documents the biographies of 60 homeless people from a range of different backgrounds in South Africa’s capital city of Pretoria. The article focuses on their right to the city and how the lack thereof affects their daily lives. It explores the challenges they face on a daily basis and the different strategies they implement in mitigating these challenges.

KEYWORDS:

• Homelessness
• community
• public spaces
• the right to the city
• challenges
• survival strategies

1. Introduction

This article aims to contribute to wider debates about the current policies that are in place concerning people who are homeless and their right to public spaces in the inner city of Pretoria by examining the extent to which experiences in the inner city address their needs. The inner city in Pretoria is made up of the Central Business District, while the areas around it are of varied serviceable uses and attached higher-density residential areas. The Central Business District together with government department buildings with a number of shops, museums and offices mixed with other functions such as administration, finance and entertainment form the central core of the city. Access to these public spaces, amenities and services is a basic right for those who dwell in it, but the level of access differs from person to person. For a person who is homeless, access to certain activities, places and services is restricted and in some cases denied.

2. Right to the city

Sammie, originally from Giyani - a rural town in Limpopo, came to Pretoria to follow his dreams of establishing his career and meeting the woman of his dreams to one day start a family. He got to Pretoria and started working as a security guard. He has no other family in the city so he started out by living with his mother’s friend in Mamelodi. When pay day came he realised that his money was not enough to commute to work and go back to Mamelodi. He also found that the money was not enough to rent a flat or a room anywhere in the inner city. So he moved to the streets. After moving to the streets he got mugged and the few belongings he had were stolen. Sammie decided to open a bank account to keep his money safe only to find out that he needs a fixed residential address to open one. The city that draws him to its borders seemed to be rejecting him.

The city has many people living in it. It draws people from around its borders with a promise of a flourishing future from the resources and centralised economic activities that are found in the city. Everyone who comes into the city comes to survive and everyone has rights to things in the city, but some have greater access than others and are able to exercise these rights. They can, for example, open a bank account or send their children to schools because they have a fixed residential address which is a prerequisite for accessing most of these services provided in the city; thus creating a distinction between those who can practice their rights and those who cannot. The conception of the right to the city in 1968 was conceived by Henri Lefebvre, a French Marxist sociologist and philosopher. The right to the city is defined as the equitable usufruct of cities by adhering to the principles of sustainability, democracy, equity and social justice (Grahl, 2005). It is the collective right of the inhabitants of cities, in particular of the vulnerable and marginalised groups, that confers upon them legitimacy of action and organisation, based on their uses and customs, with the objective to achieve full exercise of the right to free self-determination and an adequate standard of living (Grahl, 2005). The right to the city is mutually dependent on all human rights, and therefore includes all civil, political, economic, social, cultural and environmental rights which are already regulated in the international human rights treaties (Grahl, 2005).

This assumes the inclusion of the rights to work in equitable and satisfactory conditions; to establish and affiliate with unions; to social security, public health, clean drinking water, energy, public transportation and other social services; to food, clothing and adequate shelter; to quality public education and to culture; to information, political participation, peaceful co-existence and access to justice; and to organise, gather and manifest one’s opinion (Grahl, 2005). It also includes respect for minorities; ethnic, racial, sexual and cultural plurality; and respect for migrants. In Pretoria, like in any other city, lack of residency excludes an inhabitant of the city from participating in most services and activities the city and country has to offer.

3. Homelessness in Pretoria

Homelessness in South Africa cannot be discussed without taking into consideration its historical perspective and how policies implemented during the apartheid regime contributed to its current state. Controlled urbanisation policies and the racial segregation of residential areas resulted in housing backlogs, vagrancy and landlessness as the white population sought to force the black population to live in designated areas so as to provide whites with a workforce, while preventing the emergence of an excluded and organised threat. As the disposed resisted apartheid efforts to compel compliance, the consequences were further removals and suffering among the displaced. Homelessness occurred as a result of the increased displacements. Although the origins of homelessness in the country can be traced to policies implemented during the apartheid regime, it can also be attributed to social and economic factors. Social contributing factors include divorce, domestic violence, health problems, disability and substance abuse. Homelessness is also a result of rural–urban migration to escape poverty. It is important to note that there is a strong link between homelessness and poverty mainly caused by unemployment (Makiwane et al., 2010).

Available research into homelessness in Pretoria identified underprivileged childhood and troubled youth, joblessness and poverty, disabilities, as well as domestic and personal circumstances as the main pathways to homelessness in the region (Makiwane et al., 2010). Studies on local government responses to homelessness in South Africa are differentiated by two approaches: some take a critical ‘neo-Marxist’ perspective (Du Toit, 2010:113) by focusing on the significance of taking into consideration the relationship between homelessness and urban spaces when assessing local government responses (cf. Wright, 1997; Lofland, 1998; Mitchell, 2001; Naidoo, 2010). Others are mainly focused on the causes and socio-economic conditions of homelessness in the region (cf. Cross & Seager, 2010; Makiwane et al., 2010). However, not much is known about homelessness in Pretoria’s inner city with regards to homeless individuals’ right to the city and the challenges they face on a daily basis in the meeting of their basic necessities.

4. Methodology

The researchers approached this study using qualitative research designs because they wanted to explore the experiences and survival strategies that homeless individuals have in the inner city. Prospective informants were approached during the day on the streets, through drop-in centres (Akanani,¹ Night Church² and Koffiehuis³) in the inner city that are established to assist the homeless. Although the researchers led the selection process, they relied on the willingness of those approached to participate. In some cases incentives such as food parcels were used, where the researchers shared a meal with informants during the discussions. They looked at the social interactions amongst the informants, behaviours they portrayed as well as the strategies they employed to survive on the streets. The researchers had informal discussions with 60 street homeless individuals; 20 were women and the rest were men. Ages ranged from 20 to 62 years. Throughout the duration of the discussions, the researchers discovered that there were more homeless men visible on the streets than there were women. According to the informants, the invisibility of homeless women on the streets was due to the fact that they mostly came out at night in specific places of the city. The researchers, however, after much investigation discovered that there were more shelters which offer services to women in the city than there are for men and that women are more likely to ask for help from their friends or relatives than they are to sleep on the streets. Also, the areas we frequented that were specific to this research had very few women. The prevalence of men in this research project was due to the fact that they were more visible than women.

Fieldwork methods included informal discussions with street homeless people. Discussions with homeless people were directed by the following parameters: where is the person now on their road of life, what they do on a daily basis, places they frequent, where they get food, how they get food and why they frequent the places they go to; discussion of key events (positive and negative experiences) in their lives; experiences that may have had an influence on their values in terms of choices and behaviour; what they hope to accomplish in the future; their relationships and networks in the city, places of recreational activities; level of access to public amenities in the city; and experiences with city officials and service providers in inner-city Pretoria. These informal discussions were conducted to find out where the people came from, factors that led them to the streets and their daily lives. Observations in the inner city took place mainly in parks, places frequented by people who are homeless. These observations were important because they showed the daily strife of people who are homeless in Pretoria as well as what they do during the day. The researchers observed the movements of homeless persons, their interactions with people who are not homeless, their interactions with one another and activities that there were not so comfortable to share during our discussions. From the discussions and observation the researchers were able to see the main challenges that the informants struggled with. These challenges are little access to food, water, sanitation and security.

Ethnographic analysis of participant-observation field notes concentrated on finding pragmatic indication of experiences of and access to amenities by homeless individuals in the city. It also yielded data on informal conversations and ordinary observations that innately took place. Data collected were coded by the themes that arose throughout the research project. A thematic content analysis of the informal discussions and documents collected from the media, the Internet and literature provided a qualitative understanding of the range of discourse available. The discussions were coded based on themes identified in the literature as well as the observations and discourse in the ethnographic fieldwork. The following list of themes provided a qualitative presentation of the data: right to the city; power, lack of access; public spaces; security and safety; and stigmatisation.

Critical discourse analysis of informal discussions detected the anxieties the informants had with ethnocentrism, social control, xenophobia, status anxiety, mobility, social order, racism as well as fear of crime and violence, and overt expressions of a wish for a new home and sense of community.

5. Findings and analysis

The researchers discovered that stigmatisation, security, community, access to food and ablution facilities were recurring topics in the narratives of the informants. We will discuss in further detail, with examples from the field, what these themes entail in this section.

5.1. Food (in)security and daily activities

For homeless people, working towards accessing food is a priority, and given their circumstances this proves challenging:

It’s hard to find food. I am always hungry, and because we don’t have food sometimes I go days without eating. (John)

Food security is the ability to ensure that all households and all individuals within them have adequate resources to obtain appropriate food for a nutritional diet. Access depends upon income available to the household, on the distribution of income within the household and on the price of food (USAID, 1995). By this definition, homelessness places people at a disadvantage for two reasons; firstly, the lack of an income hinders them from purchasing food; and, secondly, being homeless diminishes a person’s possibility of accessing food, which results in a greater risk of malnutrition. For the homeless the concept of nutrition is a luxury they can ill afford, meaning they address hunger from a biological perspective of not feeling hungry because they eat to survive or they take substances that make them forget about hunger. Substances like nyaope or heroin.

In order to access food, the majority of informants rely on the outreach programmes of drop-in centres such as Akanani which provide them with tea and bread in the morning. Another method used by the homeless to access food is begging. This is visible on the street pavements, by the traffic lights and sometimes within fast-food franchises, which often results in homeless individuals being expelled from the premises.

Mitchell (2003:128) asserts that the right to be in the city for many is a great effort but through that effort people have produced new ways of surviving and inhabiting public spaces. Some of the people observed during this study have created new ways of living on the streets of Pretoria by having structured their lifestyles to rotate around the places that they frequent. Instead of the ‘begging and stealing’ that most associate with homelessness, homeless individuals have taken up jobs in the city. There are those who assist with parking and washing of cars, those who rely on charity donations and those who actually have jobs but are not paid enough to acquire accommodation.

They wake up early in the morning to avoid the influx of people coming into the city. From there onwards, some laze around in the park while others go in search of their next meal. Through the discussions and the interviews, the researchers were able to establish what a typical day for a homeless individual constitutes. The day revolves around acquiring food, so whatever they are doing ceases when it is time for a food break. The majority of informants knew where the food spots are located in the city.⁴ Time between meals is spent either begging, volunteering at a drop-in centre, job hunting, sleeping, working or being involved in petty crimes in the city. In the case of the men who help out at Akanani, this is cleaning, going for outreaches and any other tasks that provide the opportunity to help:

Since I’m almost always in the park, I do not experience bad stuff. I always have access to the park except in the night when they lock up. I don’t need to go to other parks. I know that in other places I am not allowed to be there so I never go there. There isn’t much to do around here for fun so I just sit in the park and sometimes talk to the people around me. I do not have friends here in the city so most of the time I am alone, the only time where I am with people for a very long time is when I come for tea and devotions in the morning. Here we are all the same, looking for the same thing. We don’t have entertainment unless Tshwane Leadership Foundation⁵ have functions. (Peter)

The daily lives of homeless individuals are further complicated by the rules and regulations of the city. According to the City of Tshwane Metropolitan Municipality By-Laws Pertaining to Public Amenities (under the section of loitering and prohibited action), it is illegal for anybody to be homeless and perform actions like begging or being on the streets without a home to return to (Environment and Recreation Management, 2014).⁶ Most people who are homeless are treated with suspicion, alarm, annoyance, trepidation and sometimes fear in the public spaces that they occupy. Mitchell (2003) argues that public spaces are being controlled and limited by physical barriers, behaviour alteration techniques and strict policing methods (sometimes including surveillance cameras). To be in a public space, one has to not be homeless according to the by-laws of the city, otherwise it is a violation against the city that is payable by a fine or by being incarcerated (Environment and Recreation Management, 2014). Therefore, in order to survive the streets and have access to food and a place to sleep, homeless individuals have devised a system that allows them to maximise the few opportunities they get. They have created a camaraderie based on survival and safety. Safety here can also be interpreted as not falling foul of the by-laws. They warn each other when there is trouble or food:

When the people come to give us food, we call everyone to come eat or they call us if we have not seen the car. Also when the police come we tell the others. We make a whistle so that they know the police are coming. (Patrick)

5.2. Water, sanitation and stigmatisation

Besides trying to secure a meal, another problem that affects the homeless is stigmatisation. Sociologist Erving Goffman (1963:3) defined stigma as an ‘attribute or reputation which socially discredits an individual classifying them as a rejected stereotype’. Stigmatisation towards the homeless is due to many factors, but one of the biggest contributing factors is their inability to access water and sanitation services within the city structures, a fundamental human right essential to life, health and dignity. The term ‘sanitation’ in this article refers to the provision of facilities and services for the safe disposal of human urine and faeces and the maintenance of hygienic conditions brought forward by the United Nations. The implementation of the right to sanitation services is incumbent on availability, accessibility, affordability, and quality, making it a challenge for the homeless to exercise this right. Availability requires that water and sanitation facilities exist to meet people’s basic needs. Facilities required to access water and meet the hygienic needs of people must be readily available, sufficient and continuous for personal and domestic purposes – these purposes include drinking, personal sanitation, washing clothes, preparation of food, hand washing, management of menstrual hygiene and ability to urinate or defecate. Being homeless with a limited right to the city means that one does not always have a place to access clean water and good ablution facilities, thus making public urination and defecation a regular practice amongst the homeless. This creates conditions that are detrimental to the health of homeless individuals and those around them. This further emphasises the importance of available facilities in public spaces. Accessibility demands that infrastructure should be built which can be used by all, because facilities that are not accessible allow people to develop alternatives which do not promote good sanitation.

Informants who occupy spaces close to Sammy Marks Square in inner-city Pretoria explained how they do not use the toilets in the square because they have to pay to go in. This is an example of being locked out of public amenities. Such measures may help the City of Pretoria to generate some income for the maintenance of public amenities, and it also acts as a marker of distinction because it divides city people into those who can pay and those who cannot pay, which extends to different levels of acceptability and respectability. The issue of insufficient public facilities was brought forward by many informants. They bemoaned the long distances they have to walk as a result of insufficient facilities. They also indicated that they rarely use the facilities at the Union Buildings because they are too far away and do not allow for privacy:

They make you pay to use that toilet, I need money for food. Every coin counts, so I go to the bushes. (Jacob)

You cannot really do your business there at the Union Buildings. Anybody can walk in and see what you are doing, it is embarrassing. (Juan)

In a 2012 report by the Special Rapporteur on the human rights to safe drinking water and sanitation for the UN Human Rights Council, ‘stigma’ is broadly understood as:

… a process of dehumanizing, degrading, discrediting and devaluing people in certain population groups, often based on a feeling of disgust. Stigma attaches itself to an attribute, quality or identity that is regarded as ‘inferior’ or ‘abnormal’ … Stigma is based on a socially constructed ‘us’ and ‘them’ serving to confirm the ‘normalcy’ of the majority through the devaluation of the ‘other’. (De Albuquerque, 2012a:4–5)

The majority of homeless people experience this stigma. Because of their inability to access water and other sanitation services they are shun as ‘dirty’ or ‘smelly’. This creates a space for the violation of people’s dignity, and although the issue of sanitation is a challenge faced by all homeless individuals regardless of gender, women are more at risk. Their hygienic needs are more demanding than those of men (specifically when they are menstruating), and improvisation is their main strategy to overcome this challenge:

I feel dirty and I smell all the time, it’s not nice feeling like this especially during that time and I can’t buy always ultra (sanitary pads) so I will use toilet paper. (Sarah)

Affordability is a major concern for the homeless, who generally do not have an inadequate income to fulfil their basic needs. Tap water which they rarely have access to is often regarded as unsafe to drink. Although the more privileged members of society prefer to purchase bottled water, this is a luxury for homeless individuals who cannot afford it.

In order to promote good health, quality plays a crucial key role in the provision of water and sanitation services:

Water must be of quality that is safe for human consumption, for personal and domestic hygiene. Sanitation facilities must be safe and prevent human, animal, insect contact with human excreta to ensure the health of the user – washing hands. (De Albuquerque, 2012b:5)

To meet their sanitary needs, homeless people in Pretoria also visit drop in centres. Facilities such as Night Church which provide spaces for the homeless to bath and wash their clothes have been designed to assist the homeless in exercising their rights and maintaining their dignity. However the number of facilities is not enough to assist all the homeless people in the city. Most of these shelters and drop in centre facilities are only available during specific times, for instance in the case of Night Church they are only accessible from Mondays to Fridays at night. The use of open public spaces often becomes the only option. For example, in the neighbourhood of Arcadia there is an open water canal which homeless people often use to clean themselves and to wash their clothes. This canal is also used by many to dispose their garbage and as a result is infested with rats creating health hazards for people who come in contact with it:

I usually bath in the Apies River, there is no queuing here and I can wash my clothes when I bath. But sometimes it is too cold so I do not bath for several days. On these days I cannot go look for jobs because I have not been bathing. (Steve)

5.3. Community and the right to personal security

Most people think of communities as places or settings where people share customs, a language, ideas, skills and services. Members need to have access to the community, to be able to communicate with each other and to develop some sort of relationship with each other and some form with the community. For homeless individuals, ‘community’ is constructed differently. Anthony Cohen (1985) stated that community should be seen as a symbolic and contrastive concept. The homeless can identify themselves as a community in that sense; a social group that is marked off from another because of their status in society. The general consensus amongst the informants was that on the streets one always has to look out for oneself but there are times when different groups of homeless people come together, creating a sense of community and unity. These cases usually occur when there is an excess of food being distributed to homeless individuals or when they are warning each other of possible raids by the metro police. Within Pretoria’s inner city, factors inhibiting solidarity amongst the homeless are those that separate the homeless from the general population. These revolve around issues of inequality and discrimination, stigmatisation, harassment and xenophobia. These same issues also bring homeless individuals together to fight their rights in the face of injustices brought to them by the general city and the police.

It is crucial for homeless individuals to have access to spaces that are conducive to forming relationships. Low et al. (2006) established that public spaces can solidify relationships when people come together and participate in the same activities but if they are made uncongenial they also fester inequality and discrimination. In Pretoria’s inner city there are very few spaces for this to happen and relationships are rarely established or maintained. The practice of warning others that the police are coming is seen as a matter of courtesy. The informants generally argue that ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend’. In this case, ‘the enemy’ is anyone who behaves offensively towards the people who are homeless. Often, homeless individuals do not belong to specific groups. It is very lonely for them unless they have another relative or a friend staying with them on the streets. They go about their business alone. They have few places where they gather together except for centres like Akanani, Koffiehuis and Night Church where they meet to engage in church activities and to share meals. These may be seen as places where relationships can be established and flourish but homeless persons are constantly on the move, looking for opportunities to better themselves. Therefore, even if they have places where they gather together,; the uncertainty of not knowing whether they will see a person they befriended again, coupled with a lack of trust, impede on creating meaningful relationships:

I have been on the street for two years now and I can honestly say that I have never really had a friend here. I see the guys, I talk to them sometimes even share a joint [a rolled marijuana cigarette] and sleep at the same place but tomorrow they could be gone or even rob you of your stuff. (Treyvon)

A further threat to the safety of homeless people is discrimination. This is mainly experienced by African foreigners living in South Africa. Xenophobia – dislike or prejudice against people from other countries – has been an issue in post-democratic South Africa and has increased in the past five years with deadly attacks towards foreigners (mainly African nationals). This has received large media attention since the nationwide attacks that took place in 2008 and again in 2015. Although these anti-foreigner sentiments have been mainly experienced by people living in the big townships situated in Gauteng as well as in the informal settlements, homeless foreigners have also been subjected to this type of discrimination and harassment. Most African foreign nationals flee their country (some with their families due to poverty or political instability) as asylum seekers and move to South Africa in the hopes of a better life. They often find themselves without a place to stay, unable to find employment due to lack of documentation, and they have no choice but to make the streets their homes:

I left my country [Zimbabwe] because things were bad back home, and I thought I would get job and get money to send to my family but things have been difficult. There are many of us here, from different countries. We are here for the same reason. (Jacob)

Within the inner city of Pretoria, outside the United Nations Information Centre situated in Prinsloo Street, there is a group of homeless people from other African countries (mainly Democratic Republic of Congo, Somalia and Zimbabwe) who squat there because there are security guards there and they see the place as diplomatic ground. Most explained how they feel safe in the group because they are all ‘outsiders in a foreign land’:

Among us there are only foreigners, the South Africa people don’t want us here. I was once attacked by another homeless guy from here because I offered to wash the car of someone he usually washes. So it’s better this way because we protect each other. (Jean)

Safety and security, a crucial aspect of human lives, is not always guaranteed for the homeless because their circumstances render them vulnerable and exposed. Issues like xenophobia, mistrust, and stigma all play a role in increasing their vulnerability. Section 12 of the South African Bill of Rights states that everyone has the right to freedom and security of the person and the right to bodily and psychological integrity (1996). However due to their circumstances, homeless individuals’ level of exposure is higher than that of someone who has accommodation. Although safety is a general concern for homeless people regardless of gender or age, it is a greater concern for women and children who are perceived as the most vulnerable and more susceptible to sexual exploitation.

Security issues that emerged often during interviews involved police brutality, exposure to crime and discrimination within the homeless population towards homeless foreigners:

I used to sleep with some of the guys in Pretorius Street and then the metro⁷ came, they take our stuff and poured cold water on us at midnight. We had to leave because they didn’t want us there. Now we sleep next to the police building in Pretorius. We have to sleep with our bags as pillows because the police and the thieves come and search us and steal our stuff. I do not have problem accessing places that I don’t pay to get in because they are free. I don’t have money to get into places they make you pay. I don’t have many friends on the streets and the little that I have I don’t ask them for anything because I do not want to be a burden. (Esteban)

6. Conclusion

This study demonstrates that while homeless individuals constantly forge new ways of living in the inner city to survive, there is still a lot that must be done to ensure every person’s dignity whilst dwelling on the streets is preserved. How the homeless continue to survive despite the many challenges they face daily attests to their tenacity and resilience as human beings. They forge their niche in places that easily push them to the periphery. The City of Tshwane needs to find practical ways of limiting, even eradicating, the neglect, abuse and stigmatisation that people who are homeless are subject to on a daily basis. Local government needs to make sure that all the citizens of the city are accounted for in changes to policies and developments that the city contemplates implementing. Any change in social attitudes or policy can only come about through some form of action that draws attention to the circumstances of a particular group within society.

This study was undertaken to give a platform to voice the grievances of people who are homeless. It is not enough to have good policies. The answer lies not in making more policies but in making humane policies and implementing them. By using narratives from homeless individuals, policies will be better informed that address the challenges homeless individuals face. Knowing what brings people to the streets will also aid in making preventative measures that will aid in reducing, and ultimately stop, the influx of people coming to make their homes on the streets.

Acknowledgements

This work forms part of research conducted for the 2015 Tshwane Homeless Summit organised by the City of Tshwane, Tshwane Homelessness Forum, University of Pretoria and University of South Africa in attempt to further understand homelessness and identify pathways out. The authors wish to thank Dr Stephan De Beer and Professor Rehana Vally for their input.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 Akanani is a Tsonga word meaning ‘let us build together’. It was previously known as the Street Ministry and started its work with the adult homeless communities of the inner city in 1997. See http://www.tlf.org.za/akanani/ Accessed 20 October 2015.

2 Night Church is a drop-in centre which aims to create a Christian healing community presence in Arcadia between 18:00 and 22:00 every weekday, offering a shower, locker space, a cup of coffee, a place to pray, a devotion every night at 21:00, free Internet and a mobile clinic every Thursday evening. See http://www.compassioncentre.co.za/night-church.html Accessed 20 October 2015.

3 Koffiehuis is a drop-in centre for the homeless that provides them with a church service and a meal every Friday night.

4 Food being given out by FBOs, NGOs and good samaritans.

5 Tshwane Leadership Foundation is a faith-based organisation that provides services for homeless individuals in the inner city of Pretoria.

6 The city by-laws are made to cater for an ideal situation where there is no homelessness. However the reality is different and these by-laws become counteractive because they work against vulnerable people and turn them into delinquents and petty criminals; therefore the laws reflect the social reality that we are living in.

7 Metro police – a generic title for the municipal police force for a major metropolitan area, and it may be part of the official title of the force.