Fellow scribe Ndumiso Ngcobo (who also hosts a talk show on East Coast Radio in KZN) frequently calls me Jesus – mainly because I am once again sporting long flowing hair and a beard.
I thanked him for the compliment. “I'm a big fan of Jesus,” I said. “You know the way he whipped the life out of those moneylenders who had gathered in the synagogue? ‘My father's house (Thwack!) is meant to be a house of prayer (Thwack!) but you have turned it into a house of thieves! (Thwack! Thwack! Thwack!)’
“We could have used that with Wall Street!”
But I also strive to emulate Christ in many ways, I said.
(How so, he wanted to know.)
“Well, I make cripples walk and make the blind see. There were these beggars I came across – one was crippled and I tossed him a coin and he was able to walk over to it and pick it up. Then there was the blind guy who did something similar…”
I thought of that conversation last weekend. I was in Durban for the Afcon quarterfinal between South Africa and Mali (which is why I missed the Gandhi-Desai school reunion).
A guy comes up to my car window with a large garbage bag tied around his neck. He pauses and looks entreatingly in my direction. He then moves his hand to his mouth presumably to indicate hunger (although in Italy, the same expression generally translates to "what the f… are you doing?"). He then clasps his hands together and does a half-hearted curtsy.
Is there some kind of begging school somewhere that teaches guys this stuff?
I'm convinced there has to be because the beggars up here in Jo'burg go through exactly that same routine – zero variation.
It's an interesting evolution of sorts. The garbage-bag-at-intersection motif began about six or seven years ago with the person generally sporting a sign saying something along the lines of “I keep this intersection clean”.
Motorists would then financially reward the sign-bearer for his public spirit and also take advantage of the opportunity to dispose of trash from their cars. (I thought it was a great idea at the time; except driving the same route late at night inevitably revealed an intersection strewn with litter.)
Nowadays, it would appear that the “I keep this intersection clean” concept has vanished but the garbage bag lingers as an accessory.
Other begging trends have had less staying power.
For example, there was a beggar at the intersection of Jan Smuts and Bolton a few years ago who sported a sign saying “My dog arrested for killing Mugabe's chicken – need money for bail”.
He got quite a few laughs from the passing motorists and had good takings for a while. But then the novelty wore off for those of us who travelled that route on a regular basis.
Now ideally, he would have moved to a different intersection and attracted a new crowd – except the begging school had begun churning out signs with variations on the theme and competitor beggars had moved to other intersections in the vicinity.
Another trend that had a short spurt of success and then vanished for similar reasons is the blind-beggar-being-led-by-a sighted-helper combo. I first saw one of those at the intersection of Empire and Barry Hertzog in Auckland Park.
Within weeks, they were everywhere – I had no idea that so many blind people existed, let alone that they could be so quickly deployed to so many intersections across such a wide geographic area in such a short space of time.
Then they vanished; in exactly the same manner as did the hundreds of street vendors who sold us flags during the 2010 World Cup.
We also have the dark side – the street thugs who cover particular intersections with squeegees and squirt-bottles. This happens every day at two of the busiest intersections in the country in complete contravention of bylaws. The first is the intersection of the M1 and Grayston Drive in Sandton, and the second at the intersection of Allum and the start of the Jo'burg airport freeway near Eastgate shopping centre.
These guys hunt in packs and are extremely aggressive. They will pounce upon your vehicle and start washing your windscreen and will generally not move out of your path until you pay them. If you are a lone woman in the car, I expect this can be quite intimidating.
Interestingly, the same thing used to happen in Cape Town on Buitengracht at the intersection with Strand. It changed when a motorist jumped out of his vehicle in front of me, drew a firearm, and pointed it at the head of the offending youth. I have not seen them back since.
Of course the ANC used to run Cape Town in those days and that's no longer the case. Metro Police in Cape Town under the DA appear to actually enforce bylaws.
I spend a lot of time pondering this kind of stuff because beggars are the most visible manifestation of failure of societal systems to create an environment where every human being is a happy productive member of that society.
I also know that giving money to beggars never fixes the problem.