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Cape Town, South Africa – Carin Gelderbloem woke up in the early hours by a large rock that had fallen into his tent. A group of high school students were drinking all day at Company’s Garden, down the road from the South African Parliament.
Now they were terrifying homeless people.
When Gelderbloem’s boyfriend, Rameez Kemp, came out to protest, he was repeatedly beaten and stabbed. During the Colon hangout, he managed to reach the entrance to the park. Lost a lot of blood, he was eventually taken by ambulance to Somerset Hospital two hours later, just inches from his life.
When he complained about what happened at the Cape Town Central police station, Gelderbloem said officials told him it was his boyfriend’s fault that he had chosen to sleep badly in the first place. It was October 2018, one of the first meetings with city police.
“When you’re enforcing the law, you’re David and they’re Goliath,” he said. “They told us we had no rights.”
On the phone, Andre Trout, a spokesman for the South African Police Service in Cape Town, declined to comment on the alleged incident to Al Jazeera. “If he is rejected, he will have to file an official complaint with the police directorate. We do not take such things lightly,” he said.
During his nine years on the streets and outside, Gelderbloem, 51, complained that law enforcement officials confiscated items he used to make and sell clothes, sleeping bags, teeth, and even jewelry. More than once, at night, he says city authorities were ripping off the cardboard and plastic sheets he used to get out of the items.
Gelderbloem says such incidents led to numerous oral abuses. “They never talked to me like a decent human being,” he said. “I ask, ‘Do you talk to your mother like that?’ “Don’t think this will ever happen to you. Being homeless can happen to anyone in the blink of an eye.”
Archaic statutes, rooted in the vagaries of colonialism and rooted in “approved laws” exported by the Dutch and British to dominate the indigenous population, essentially criminalizing homelessness in municipalities across South Africa. In Cape Town, 2,000 South Africans ($ 146) have been fined for lying, sitting or standing in public spaces. Although these statutes apply technically to all of them, they are disproportionately affecting homeless people who often cannot go anywhere else. Changing the statutes, which is currently being considered in public, would allow law enforcement to physically remove homeless people from an area and detain them on the spot if they refuse to offer alternative shelter and take up tents.
In the UK, lawmakers are urging the government to repeal the Vagrancy Act of 1824, which criminalizes hard sleep. In Cape Town, Gelderbloem and 10 other homeless captains demand their innovation.
In March, two petitions were filed – one in the Western Cape High Court and the other in the Equality Court – to challenge the constitutionality of the statutes and the alleged discriminatory effect. Applicants have been fined for violating these laws and several requests have been made for them and Al Jazeera, whose identity cards, blankets and other personal belongings have been confiscated under the law. Since the case was launched, the plaintiffs’ attorney’s attorney said one of them said he had been deprived of HIV medicine for law enforcement in a recent raid on Hope Street.
The plaintiffs want the statutes to be revoked and are demanding constitutional costs of $ 5,000 ($ 360) from city authorities.
The homeless residents of Cape Town say law enforcement agencies regularly remove plastic sheets from their stores, exposing them to harsh winter items. [Sindile Sydwell Kamlana/Al Jazeera]
Last week, Cape Town posted a press release shared on Facebook in the city by several councilors from the Democratic Alliance, a major opposition group that controls South Africa’s Western Cape province, as it prepares to challenge the challenge of provincial rules.
“Law enforcement officials have a duty to apply the law equally and respond to the hundreds of complaints that residents make each month about their behavior toward society, breaking statutes and crimes committed by some people living on the streets.” he stated.
“When all offers of social assistance are rejected, only then will the City Council issue compliance notices and fines, the main legal mechanisms in place to enforce provincial regulations.”
Councilors for the Democratic Alliance also sent a massive email with a form to send complaints about homeless people trying to build a lawsuit.
Jonty Cogger, a lawyer for Ndifuna Ukwazi, an activist organization representing homeless applicants, said the council’s response was “reprehensible” and “inciting hatred of homeless people”.
“Asking for complaints from appraisers, residents and businesses – people with privileges – is a dangerous and divisive legal strategy that will exacerbate the vulnerability and marginalization of street people in society,” he added.
Gelderbloem, right, and her boyfriend, Rameez Kemp [Sindile Sydwell Kamlana/Al Jazeera]
In 2019, 4,862 people were homeless in Cape Town, according to data from the Western Cape province government.
A new study released in November 2020 by three non-profit organizations (U-Turn, Khulisa Streetscapes and MES) said the actual number is over 14,000.
JP Smith, a member of the city’s mayoral safety and security committee, said he is likely to do a “double count,” as various data are being collected. However, he admitted that the situation was “tremendously exacerbated” after the country’s first coronavirus blockade last year. The NGO survey was mainly based on data from the first blockade.
The three groups also estimate that Cape Town spends more than Rs 335.2 crore ($ 24.4 crore) on anti-homeless law enforcement and criminal measures – and Rs 121.9 crore ($ 8.9 million) on social development programs alone.
“That’s utter nonsense and a grotesque representation of the figures,” Smith said, among other things, accusing the perpetrators of using law enforcement budgets as if they were only used to target homeless people. In fact, these calculations of the money spent on caring for homeless people in the city have been based on a survey of 350 homeless people, government reports and interviews with officials.
Smith added that Cape Town had the most liberal policy with homeless people in any city in South Africa and that similar rules exist around the world.
For Gelderblocks, however, that doesn’t matter. “We have to win this case. The council needs to realize that homeless people are people, ”he said.
It may take months for the verdict to be handed down.
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