Durban Homeless man earns living selling books
Income from book sales has allowed Richard Nzima to send money home and pay his daughter’s school fees.
A HOMELESS man in Durban is rebuilding his life thanks to a project run by the Denis Hurley Centre.
Richard Nzima arrived in Durban in mid-2018 in search of work and was robbed of his possessions. “The kindness of strangers helped me survive the rough world of the streets and stave off hunger,” he said. Nzima joined the Denis Hurley Centre’s Booksellers of Mzansi project which enables homeless people to earn a dignified living from selling donated books. The Catholic Church initiative is named after the late Archbishop Denis Hurley who made the poor and vulnerable the focus of his work.
Over the Christmas and new year holidays, the Pick ‘n Pay Hypermarket in Durban North offered him space in its foyer free of cost.
“With the help of Anivesh Singh of #HashtagBooks, I set up my book table and everybody who came by stopped for a chat and very often parted with a few Rand to buy a book,” added Nzima.
Income from the book sales has allowed Nzima to send money home and pay his daughter’s school fees.
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“Anybody can fall on hard times. Earning a living through giving a service helps me keep my pride,” said Nzima, who treats his book table as a small business rather than a charity.
The Denis Hurley Centre has half a dozen people on the Booksellers project. It has grown phenomenally over the past six months in both modest income generation for the participants but also in capturing the public’s imagination.
“People call us when they are clearing out their homes and we collect the books they have no need for,” he said. Book donations are sorted and cleaned up before being dispatched to sellers around the city. Nzima added that it was wonderful that Durban was a UNESCO City of Literature and this project was a small way of encouraging reading in the city that is now his home.
For book donations, contact Richard Nzima on 073 413 0771.
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