For many years, businesses and residents surrounding Fourth Street complained about the state of the pavement soon after vagrants and drug users moved in. The Krugersdorp News has been reporting on this issue since 2021 and has told many people’s stories.
These days, and if you drive in Fourth Street, the view is much different thanks to the hard work of several role players and the determination of ward councillors.
Ward councillor Mark Trump told the News that he first started working with the residents and business people in Fourth Street in 2021. He wanted to work with the businesses as well since they were the ones losing customers and revenue. He saw a post on social media about needles lying around and he and the councillor for the area at the time had a conversation about the issues. She told him that she had been trying to clean up the street for a while.
His first step was to organise a medical box for the dirty needles to be discarded. One of the issues was that this type of behaviour was taking place in front of primary school children in Krugersdorp North.
Trump then started interviewing the homeless living on the streets in the area. Not all of them were drug users and where he could, he arranged medical help and a place to stay.
Everyone on the street has a history, be it child abuse, post-traumatic stress disorder or gender-based violence. Getting to a place where we could remove these people was a process and we had to keep on going back to see how we can help them,” Trump said.
Later in 2021 with the help of the Community Policing Forum, police, disaster management, community safety, other councillors, and AfriForum they managed to move some of the people and eventually did a clean-up.
“They never took the people’s personal belongings, only the things that were dirty and could spread infection. The businesses then started putting up irrigation on the pavements to keep them clean.”
With this being done they were still far from a sustainable solution and the homeless still lived in Fourth Street. Although many called for by-laws to be enforced, Trump raised the question, how do you give someone living on the streets a fine? Sending them to jail could also aggravate their already fragile mental health and add to their trauma.
Eventually, the homeless started erecting tents and other structures. The situation became desperate as customers were being attacked and businesses burgled. Earlier this year a massive clean-up campaign was launched. This campaign saw most of the homeless being moved to shelters or other places of safety. This was, however, only done after they were warned eight times that they had to move. They were also searched for drugs on multiple occasions.
At this point, the community felt that the street dwellers had more rights than them. The cold weather played into the teams’ hands and they used this to move many of the homeless to a safe and warm place. Trump wants people to know that just giving away money or food to the homeless is not helping them better themselves. He pleaded that residents should rather give the money to shelters like Tower of Life and Grace House.
We want to teach the community that there are people at shelters and NPOs that know how to look after these people and work with them to help them better their lives.”
Moving forward those involved want to create a policy that dictates local government on how to create safe and clean open spaces as well as social cohesion between reputable NPOs and NGOs and the community.
“We want to create more awareness of the effects of drug abuse and mental health issues on the homeless and get mobile clinics from the provincial government that are dedicated to the homeless and monitor addiction, disease and other risks.”
Trump said the provincial government needs to establish local facilities for street dwellers to be monitored and have access to social workers, nurses, and doctors.
