Just how many sides a story can have was brought to light when a man begging in Parkmore said he was raising funds for facial reconstructive surgery on his burn wounds. His story pulls at one’s heart-strings, but apparently it is one-sided.
Community members have claimed that despite their efforts to help him, he continues to beg, making his plight out to be worse than it is. However, he has his own story to tell on the matter.
While we investigate this story, we can consider how the act of one person helping another in need shows a real sense of community; but what we can question from the allegations made about this story, is what happens to that unity when community members find out that their perception of the person they were helping had been manipulated.
There are numerous cases of community members making a substantial living by misrepresenting their reality in order to play on people’s acts of kindness. For example, it was reported a man in Kentucky staged being physically and mentally handicapped and earned US$100 000 (R1 235 400) a year begging in a community where the average household income per year was US$42 000 (R518 869).
In another case, a London man reportedly earned UK£50 000 (R953 297) per year and lived in a UK£300 000 (R5 719 785) house from acting homeless and hungry. The people who had empathised with the man were outraged that he had deceived them.
As the alleged Fifa scandal dominates international headlines, communities around the world are also feeling deceived. Sport is supposed to foster a sense of community among people – just as our very own Nelson Mandela used the 1995 Rugby World Cup to unite South Africans – so it is ironic that the federation for, arguably, the world’s largest sport is rocked by allegations of bribery and corruption. The impact of such alleged deceit is that it divides communities – the exact opposite of the intention of sport.
These instances serve to remind us that our perception is not always a true reflection of reality, and sometimes we need to remind ourselves not to judge a book by its cover, as the age-old cliche states.
The sad reality is that in instances where someone takes advantage of others under false pretences, a sense of companionship and community is lost.
