GALLERY: Homeless life just out of sight
RANDPARK RIDGE - Vagrants occupy the large area flanking Beyers Naudé.
Just beyond the vision of hundreds of commuters that pass each morning and night lies a community of vagrants that reside on the grass rise at the intersection of Beyers Naudé Drive and Jim Fouché Road in Randpark Ridge. The rise overlooks the N1 Highway and Joburg beyond it.
The area is littered with makeshift beds, scatterings of appliances, clothes and other miscellaneous objects and the embers of fires smoke on both sides of Beyers Naudé Drive as the vagrants apparently occupy the areas on either side of the road.
JMPD spokesperson Chief Superintendent Wayne Minnaar confirmed that the vagrants have been removed on numerous occasions but keep going back to the area. “It is an ongoing operation with JMPD and Johannesburg City Parks (JMPD),” explained Supt Minnaar. “Dealing with the homeless people is a challenge. We take them to suitable places such as shelters.” Supt Minnaar believes that the vagrants are able to make a better living operating from the area. “At the shelters you don’t get money. [From the inhabited area] they can beg and collect waste. They make good money like that.”
Ward 126 councillor Mike Tonkin noted, “It’s a long, drawn-out problem. We’ve had very little assistance from the government. There has been no real willingness to assist with social problems that exist for the ‘really down-and-out’.”
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