City of Cape Town is lying about looking after us, say the homeless

In reaction to an interview on SAfm with City of Cape Town’s mayoral committee member for safety and security, JP Smith, a Twitter user took to the city’s streets in a bid to show that homeless people there do not agree with Smith’s claim that the City provides alternatives to them being on the street.

The City has come under fire after reports that homeless people are being fined for by-law infringements, but Smith argued that the by-laws apply to all South Africans, not just the homeless, and that fines for infringements such as lighting fires in public must be enforced so that there’s “equity before the criminal justice system”.

The Twitter user, who was contacted by The Citizen and asked to remain anonymous, posted a range of videos of his interviews with homeless Capetonians.

“This is an audio recording of JP Smith, a councillor from [the DA] rubbishing claims that they are targeting homeless people,” he tweeted.

READ MORE: City of Cape Town gets flak over poverty bylaw

“His arrogance annoyed me so I took a detour to go and speak to the homeless people in Observatory and get their take on what JP Smith said on radio. Here is what they had to say after I told them what is being said about them by [City of Cape Town],” he said in a follow-up tweet.

In one video, a homeless woman alleges that the accommodation offered by the city is not suitable for human beings. “I think it’s better for dogs to stay there,” she said.

In another video, it is alleged that shelters have “no privacy” and “less than half” of what is promised.

They also say they are made to pay between R10 and R25 to sleep in shelters.

The woman also highlighted what she claims is the mistreatment of homeless people with children, citing this as a reason why homeless parents may be reluctant to go to shelters. She said while she acknowledges that “kids are not supposed to be there”, she called into question the City’s foster program, saying mothers are not allowed any say regarding what happens to their children and that in some cases they are taken away from the parents against their will.

The woman, as well as another homeless woman filmed in some of the later videos, accuses Cape Town police of constantly fining them – a practice they say began well before reports of this surfaced in the media – raiding the places they are sleeping and confiscating their belongings.

“Days like this tonight, they take our blankets, everything, on a rainy day like this we will have nothing to sleep, we will be going door to door for blankets,” one of the women says. They “take all the people’s things even clothes” and “leave nothing behind”, says the other.

READ MORE: City of Cape Town makes available R699K for aid to street people this winter

They say they have been made to sign forms, alleging they did not know what they were signing at the time and that this later turned out to be confirmation that they are aware that they can be fined.

“The fine is R800. They have been giving us fines in town every day for 2 weeks,” one woman says.

They also alleged they are abused by those that fine them.

“The way they treat us first of all, if I had a phone I would record them, the times they give the fines and that you should hear they way they talk, and beat the people, it’s not right,” one of the women says.

While a man in one of the videos complains of being woken up and removed from areas in Observatory by security, one of the women says she has a good relationship with security.

“We clean where we sleep, we make sure we don’t give security a hard time so tomorrow night we can sleep there again,” she says, while discussing the fines she allegedly gets for sleeping on the road.

The woman accuses The City of lying about the options the homeless are afforded.

“Whatever they say to you that they give [to] us or do [for us] they are lying,” she says.

In response to the claims made by the homeless in this article, The City of Cape Town wrote the following:

“The City’s ‘accommodation’ for street people (the Culemborg Safe Space) is a transitional space that is very well run and organised, and has assisted more than 600 persons since it opened in July 2018.

READ MORE: ANC paid influencers behind Cape Town homeless outrage – DA’s JP Smith

“The City of Cape Town does not run shelters and that oversight of such facilities is the responsibility of the Western Cape Government.

“Oversight of children is done by the Western Cape Government, and not the City of Cape Town and that the City does not have a foster programme, as alleged.

“That Law Enforcement officers remove structures that are illegally erected, and accumulated waste and that they are not allowed to remove anyone’s personal belongings”.

In the SAfm interview the videos were filmed in reaction to, Smith further denies that there is any inhumane treatment of the homeless.

“When we drafted these by-laws we compared them meticulously against the bylaws of Tshwane, Ekurhuleni, Ethekwini [and other metros] run by the [ANC] and we’ve found these by-laws to be extremely humane in comparison,” he said.

He says The City of Cape Town has made sure they have offered solutions that “suit the life of a homeless person and ‘make it more tolerable'”.

He added that he believes there is “no-one on our streets who has not in the past month been offered accommodation”.

The interviewer suggested that some by-laws, such as one preventing fires in public spaces, are indeed inhumane: “It’s winter, when people kindle fires to keep warm that is not a violation of a by-law it is a human being trying to survive in the winter season,” he said.

Smith countered by arguing that “by-law application has to be consistent for all people”.

“The provision of lighting a fire in a public place ‘apply to everyone’,” he said, saying it was an issue of “equity before the criminal justice system”.

READ MORE: If you’re on the street it is because you have elected to be – DA’s JP Smith

He added that the ANC’s approach to the problem of homelessness is “flawed on an almost fundamental level” in his view as they seek only to make the streets more habitable for the homeless rather than get the homeless off the street.

The Citizen reported last week that Smith had argued in another interview on Cape Talk that those on the streets were there because they had “elected to be”.

Questions were sent to Smith, who said that the treatment of the homeless in Cape Town was better than in other metros, most of which are led by the ANC.

However, according to a report in The Citizen, Cape Town is the only city that has implemented a bylaw that leads to homeless people being fined for sleeping on pavements or erecting illegal structures.

UPDATE: This story has been updated with the City’s response, 9:35, August 21. 

(Background reporting, Gcina Ntsaluba and Sinesipho Schrieber)

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