We have grown so accustomed that we start shaking our heads no as soon as we notice their approach.
The realisation of this shocked me one day as I was standing outside our offices and a boy, I estimated to be about 12 years old, came to me and asked me a question.
Before I knew it, the automatic response of “I don’t have anything” blurted out my mouth.
It’s only after he walked away, shoulders slumped, I realised he hadn’t asked for money.
All he asked was that I buy him bread from the shop next to our office so he could eat.
He didn’t want money to go buy whatever it is they buy to take off the edge.
He just wanted something to eat.
And there I was, standing with cash in my pocket as I had just come from this same shop, not to buy food so I can survive, but to buy a chocolate.
Just because I felt like one.
And here is this small boy, obviously malnourished and begging for something to eat, and I simply shook my head and said no before I actually listened.
What is it to walk the few steps to the shop and buy a loaf of bread for someone who is starving?
I felt horrified by this and it weighed heavily on my conscience.
So when I left to go home that day, I gave a few rand to one of the guys juggling those stick-things at the robot.
It didn’t ease the guilt completely, but I felt a little better.
I then argued with myself the rest of the way home, thinking about what if I had just gone to get him the bread?
Would he have gratefully accepted?
Or would he have seen that someone was willing to buy him something and ask for more, not satisfied with just bread anymore?
I guess one can never truly know the answer to this, nor would I, seeing as I didn’t help the poor fellow.
But it gets you thinking, are we, as the public and middle class, playing judge, jury and executioner?
How do we decide who is honest and just looking for food and who is trying to play us?
Because in effect, I judged, decided and ‘executed’ this boy to a life of further starvation just by deciding that he was just another beggar.
