MY CUPPA TEA
Over a cuppa with my mom one morning last week we got onto the topic of counting our blessings.
This after I said something about my many “struggles”.
I know I can be a serial complainer sometimes (my husband will say oftentimes) and mom is the total opposite. She is a remarkably calm, content and busy person. Mom worries tremendously about all of us, her daughters, too though, all the time.
She also worries about other people, like a young woman who comes to her gate often, calling “Ouma” to come out and listen to her latest tale of woe.
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I have discouraged mom going out and talking to strangers at the gate. She is a pensioner and an easy target for con artists.
But she insists this young woman is legitimate, and that the blanket she gave her was in fact stolen and that she really does owe a loan shark money, and has a bad medical condition which hampers her ability to walk (or work, seemingly).
It takes guts, mom says, to beg.
With this in mind I have more closely studied our local beggars, especially the barrage of them in and around North Rand Road.
What pains me always is the children begging, of which there seems to be an increase near East Rand Mall.
Walking out of the mall last week with my girls we saw a group of about seven shabby-looking boys, the eldest maybe 13, the youngest probably nine or 10, dash down the steps out of the mall, snake under the palisade fencing on their backs and hare in the direction of Rondebult Road.
When we got to the corner of Rondebult and North Rand in the car, they were walking briskly and looking pleased with themselves (like the cat that ate the canary) in a row along the sidewalk and then … one by one they disappeared down an open manhole!
Right there in full view in broad daylight seven children disappeared under the road.
I nearly gave myself whiplash straining to see whether my eyes were deceiving me.
I was also, in fact, still recovering from the fact that at the previous traffic light another beggar boy of about 13 was urinating in full view of the motorists stopped there. That infuriated me so much I nearly broke a knuckle on my closed window trying to bring him to his senses.
He nonchalantly turned slightly and continued relieving himself.
My daughter said well mommy where else must he go to the toilet? Where do any of these people go to the toilet? Point taken but these incidents made me highly uncomfortable – and cross.
Begging is one thing. Becoming a public nuisance or a petty criminal who hides in sewers is another.
Of course these were not the only beggars we encountered before we got home; there is one of every corner, sometimes three or four.
Yes, Ekurhuleni is littered with beggars with “guts” to make a life on the street day in and day out.
Our authorities apparently don’t have the guts to confront the issue though, allowing the art of begging to be the outstretched arms that welcome visitors to our “smart, developmental city”.
Scary.
• I did report the gang of “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” to the EMPD, so let’s hope some action has been taken.
