Town's homeless are collateral damage

“The town is empty and almost lifeless. There’s no one in sight to offer me a piece job. Times are hard for me. As I speak now, I am hungry – I am tired and frustrated.”

For the past 28 years, Shasha, as he is known to many out there, has been living on the streets of Louis Trichardt. During this time, he said, he had never had to spend a night on an empty stomach. All this changed when the lockdown period to curb the coronavirus was announced, and now he does not know where his next meal will come from.

“All mothers and sisters who operate fast-food kiosks are not coming; their businesses are closed because there’s a word moving around about a certain deadly disease,” Shasha said. “When I hear people speak about the disease, it makes me feel afraid of it, but I am not sure if that thing exists because I have not seen anyone suffering from it here.”

Shasha said that it would seem like he would perish from hunger, rather than from Covid-19. For nearly three decades, he has been surviving on odd jobs provided to him by the vendors and stall owners in the town. “They all know me, they see me as their son or brother,” he said. “During the night I also keep watch at the fruit market near Ayoba, to make sure that there are no thieves who steal from my ‘mothers’.”

He said that he hates crime with a passion, and that it is one reason he does not make friends with any of the new boys who arrive in town, because most of them eventually turn out to be thieves.

“I was falsely accused of stealing way back in 1993 here in the town and the Apartheid police used electric shocks to have me and my friend confess to a crime we didn’t commit,” he said. “On the third day, we pleaded guilty to the crime which we surely knew we had not committed. We spent a couple of years in jail before we were released on a presidential pardon.”

However, he is quick to add, the pain that was inflicted on him and his friend by the police and the bad conditions they were exposed to inside the prison could not be compared to his present situation. “I have not eaten any food for the past two days; I even feel weak,” he says and lets out a weak smile. “I am not a beggar. I am used to earning my food through working for the mothers and sisters, or any other person who offers me a piece job.”

Shasha said that his mother was of Zimbabwean origin, and he did not say much about her. His father, though, was a prominent businessman who had lived at Mudimeli village. “There was a fallout between me and my father, and I came over to Ha-Magau village in the early 1990s where I worked at a poultry farm,” he said. “When they shut down, I had to come and live on the streets of Louis Trichardt because I couldn’t go back to my father.”

He said that when his father passed away some years after, an old man had come and fetched him, so that he could lay his father to rest. “I am a strong man,” he said. “But I am not immune to hunger; it makes me feel frustrated.”

When Shasha was interviewed on Monday, he was spending his time sitting in front the kiosk in which he stores his few belongings at Eltivillas. “I seriously need help in the form of food,” he said.

(UPDATE: The situation changed on Tuesday when the Makhado Municipality managed to set up a shelter for the homeless at the show grounds. Fortunately, “Shasha” Nethavhani was one of the 15 people moved to the shelter.)

Date:10 April 2020

By: Tshifhiwa Mukwevho

Tshifhiwa Given Mukwevho was born in 1984 in Madombidzha village, not far from Louis Trichardt in the Limpopo Province. After submitting articles for roughly a year for Limpopo Mirror's youth supplement, Makoya, he started writing for the main newspaper. He is a prolific writer who published his first book, titled A Traumatic Revenge in 2011. It focusses on life on the street and how to survive amidst poverty. His second book titled The Violent Gestures of Life was published in 2014.

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