Kenneth

I spoke with Kenneth, a nice homeless man who sits outside near a tree on Main Road, on the same block as a Pick and Pay supermarket in Obseravatory. He speaks Afrikaans and English and can be difficult to understand at times, but is generally kind-hearted. His motehr was Chinese and when she died, his sisters took everything she left behind and now he doesn’t know what happened to them. Also, he doesn’t want to know about his sisters’ whereabouts. He sleeps in cardboard outside when he can, but he told me about skollies who harass him, take his shelter and whatever money he can get from begging, and about rats who gnaw on one’s ears and lips if you sleep outside in the open. I have to admit, I began our conversation very poorly, asking him how he is doing after giving him five rand. Of course, he did not respond well to that and started ranting about his life and the abuse, insults, and neglect from others because of his homelessness and poverty. I must admit, it was sometimes very difficult to understand him, partly because of his accent and partly because of his way of speaking very quickly. Anyway, Kenneth is afraid he may have Alzheimer’s, though he is 58. Being homeless and getting older will likely only make his forgetfulness and senility worse in due time. Alas, he expressed racist sentiments toward “Africans” at one point, referring to them as “kaffirs” for being mean-spirited people, bringing chaos, and causing many white South Africans to flee to New Zealand, Australia, etc.

Also, he does not have a high opinion of South Africans in general, telling me more than once to stay away from them, especially “Africans.” He also complained about the honking cars of the minibus drivers, which he claims contributes to crime, also saying that under apartheid drivers would get ticketed or arrested by the police. He didn’t seem to realize Coloured people seem to control or dominate the minibus game in Cape Town, not the “Africans” he dislikes, but who am I to challenge the racist discourse of a homeless man of Coloured and Chinese extraction, even though his life was certainly horrible under apartheid, too. But he was right, the seeming collapse of social control and the flight of white South Africans in the post-apartheid era are troubling and emblematic of many social ills and disorder. Regardless, Kenneth is a bitter, mentally ill male in need of help but does not receive it. He told me about people promising or telling him they will buy food, but they don’t, or people talking about him in their own languages pejoratively. Clearly, there are few attempts from the government to really tackle poverty and homelessness, which probably contributes to Kenneth’s disdain for South Africa generally and “Africans” particularly. I cannot help but think of him in relation to post-apartheid Coloured identity as described by scholars such as UCT’s Mohamed Adhikari, who explains Coloureds as being “not white enough under apartheid, not black enough in the New South Africa.” What many don’t realize is how little things have changed for many Black South Africans, too, so Coloureds are hardly alone when it comes to declining quality of life, etc. And Kenneth’s beliefs about South Africa and black-majority rule in South Africa are clearly negative, understandably so given his socioeconomic position.