Last week, I started sharing with readers a more or less typical Thursday in my life as a homeless man when I had been homeless for about four years.
After having had my weekly visit by the “mounties” collecting their weekly rent, I managed to escape serious injury at the hands of one of the hoodlums who came through the mountain to break into the cars in Ocean View Drive daily, and I managed to get onto the Grand Parade without getting myself arrested by the Sea Point Police for using my three-wheeled trolley.
Arriving at the Parade was always a highlight.
I was the only homeless trader but I was treated as an equal by the other stall traders. My stall of second-hand goods was popular with the other traders and the general public, and so it was my special time where I could almost feel normal.
I say almost because believe me, law enforcement would never allow me to forget I was not.
I would start the morning by buying myself and Jason, one of three homeless guys I employed to assist me, coffee and “koeksisters”.
That was followed by a long process of setting up the stall while trying to serve customers and buy products from other homeless guys who came to my stall to sell the goods they had found during their skarrel.
On this particular day, as happened on most Thursdays there was also a good skarrel in Gardens and, so, I left Jason at the stall while I went skarrelling in Gardens.
I returned about 2 hours later to find my stall missing and Jason sitting on a crate. I immediately new law enforcement had been there.
For three years, I traded informally on the deck and in front of the railway police station and had my stock confiscated at least three to four times a week for trading without a permit.
Hence my having approached the Grand Parade flea market management so that I could trade there legitimately. To get a city permit to trade on the street is virtually impossible for a homeless person. You need an ID and proof of residence.
But my legitimate presence at the Grand Parade didn’t stop law enforcement. They would watch. If I left the stand, they would move quickly to remove my stall, take it to their offices at the city hall, throw everything on the ground, take what they wanted for themselves, break most of the glassware and tell Jason to tell me to come and collect what was left of my stock before 4pm, or they would throw it all away.
I usually left it because there wouldn’t be much left to salvage. For a week, I would have to skarrel nonstop to build my stock again.
Luckily, we sold quite a number of items before law enforcement had come to spoil the day and so I paid Jason, and I went off to buy something to eat for supper, my cigarettes and three packets of tik.
I knew I needed to stay awake and have plenty of energy for the next few days if I was to build my stock again. And tik does that for you.
It’s also much easier and cheaper to obtain than any stay-awake legal option. Three packets, at R50 each, would keep me energised and awake for two days at least.
I was so upset about how the day had turned out that I didn’t have the energy to push my now-empty trolley uphill all the way back to Ocean View Drive.
Having bought my packets of tik from the dealers standing all over the Parade, I walked over to the public toilets at the Golden Acre, paid the cleaner an extra R5 so that he would know what I am going to be doing in the stall. He then knew to keep his eyes open for cops who walked in, stood on the toilets, looked over the stalls and kicked the doors down to arrest you.
It was after four when I am done. I took my trolley and started the journey up to the mountain. On my way up, I got the Sea Point police.
I couldn’t believe my luck! I knew the procedure: They throw my trolley and me in the back of the van and drove to the station. They take me to be booked for “procession of suspected stolen goods”, for a trolley they know but choose to ignore was written off by Pick n Pay and given to me.
For them, it’s an arrest that helps them reach the targets for the month. And they derive great pleasure in keeping you at the station, wasting taxpayers’ money till Monday morning when they release you, or you would have to appear in Community Court.
For me, it’s another delay to build my business as I won't be able to skarrel. On Monday, I will return to my home on the mountain to find it ransacked and destroyed. They couldn’t care less.
Two hours later I have been processed and taken to the cells where I will spend the weekend. By the time they lock the gate behind me, I become the most welcome addition to the cell as I reveal the tik and lolly to the other guys in the cell.
And so, arrested for a trumped-up charge, they missed the fact that I was bringing in an illegal substance into their cells. The guys smoked it all weekend.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, was my Thursday as a homeless man.
Have a great wet week.
* Carlos Mesquita is an activist for the homeless and a researcher working in the Western Cape Legislature for the GOOD Party.
** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Media.
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