POLOKWANE – Freedom Day is celebrated on Monday 27 April, and in line with this, Review spoke to a man whose idea of freedom differs significantly from that of most people.
Simon Ramotshabi is 61-years-old and says to him, freedom means staying alive from day to day and making the best of what he is and has, no matter what.
Early every morning he starts his routine searching the industrial waste bins that line the city’s streets. He is looking for food or anything he may be able to sell.
He says to him, freedom means he can walk wherever he wants and search the industrial waste bins in any order he chooses. He does not have the freedom to make food in his own home but has the freedom to eat from whatever he finds in bins and from people passing by.
He is free from having to spend money at any stores, as he never buys anything. He says freedom also means he can do whatever he wants when he wants.
But life on the streets comes at a price, he adds. To be free like he is means that other people feel free to call him names and sometimes even beat him up.
Simon says he was a happily married man working for a family on a farm in the then Naboomspruit area, now known as Mookgophong. He says it was just after the 1994 election that his employment with this family was terminated and he went back to Bobonong, where he grew up. There he struggled to get another job. In 1999, he left his wife and two-year-old son with her family and came to Polokwane. He has not seen them since. “I had to leave my wife and two-year-old son behind and have never seen them again. I do not have the freedom to know what happened to them,” he says.
“On the streets you do not know what the next day will hold. You can be mugged by someone who thinks you have something valuable. You may even get into an unwanted fight for going through a bin someone else wanted to go through first. But still you have the freedom to make your own way, no matter how hard it may be,” Simon says.
“Freedom means that you choose to make the best of every day. No matter what your circumstances may be, it is up to you to make everything count.”
