At one time, it was a rubbish dump, a place where people discarded
rubbish. Useless and obsolete objects in their homes and lives that were
no longer of any use to them. Broken goods discarded because it became a
source of shame.
Now its people that have been abandoned on this rubbish dump. Elderly
men with wrinkled hands. Children with big eyes … only eyes with no
expression. Children who look at what they see, because things around
this place are just there, and has no use or meaning.
A
man sitting in a tin shack, which from a distance looks like a typical
doghouse on a farm stand, but for this man is a form of shelter.
Recently the man was operated on for a hernia and the 13cm long, 5cm
wide wound is open. The smell emanating from the infection of septicemia
is unbearable. “Did you bring me patches?” He asks. The old man walking
beside me said, “I’ll give him another week, it’s the fifth person this
year. The wounds become septic and they die, I have witnessed so many.”
Not far away in another tin shelter, live two elderly 70 year-olds
who left behind a life of security and dignity. While he lived in
Zimbabwe, he was considered a wealthy man and worked as a plumber. He
was driven off his land and could not get assistance in South Africa,
now forced into a squatter camp, his only place of survival. His wife
cannot walk, just lays down while, suffering from fermenting wounds on
the bottom of both her feet. Clinic sisters will not visit this forsaken
place. It’s a struggle; the woman needs support to get her into a taxi
that can take her to a government hospital.
The clinic sisters are not the only ones who choose not to visit this
dreadful place. Pointing to another tin shack the man said, “The woman
over there, her husband died a while back, the ministers did not want to
come here and help. We had to ask a black pastor who works in a field
church to help assist with a burial.”
People do not come here. People do not go to visit a “scrap heap of souls”.
Between the stones a bunch of kids play, it’s a hopeless game, a game
without purpose or reason. They do not understand basic skills, and
when some children learn to count from their mothers who would say, “go
get me 3 eggs” or “quickly run to a cafe with this R20 note and buy a
loaf of bread. Check that you receive the correct change, “the others do
not know. For in this place, it is seldom that you get three eggs and
to hold a twenty-rand note, it is a fortune that they do not know. The
only point of this little game is to make them tired so that they can go
and sleep.
The children usually speak Afrikaans while playing their game and it
is as though the words they utter are not of this rotten earth. It is
not a language that you want to hear upon a dunghill. There is no shade,
no trees or shrubs, no fertile soil for vegetables, no water. It’s just
the gleaming white sun above them that they observe. Yet they play …
It’s the eyes that speak volumes. Large dark pools of blue expectation
of which they cannot identify.
This is the contradiction, the hard diversity of realities that hits
one the deepest when you walk into this place. The inferior huts that
are painfully neat and tidy with the handwritten notice on the door:
“Knock before you enter”. Not because there is something to hide –
because in rubbish dump of human decay nothing can be hidden.
Nevertheless, it is the last bit of self-respect and self-esteem there
is.
In contrast, the loss, shame, and self-respect, is most visible to
the children. There are three boys, two with blond hair, and probably
brothers, and a dark haired child with a crown and scattered freckles.
The three boys scratch in the bin behind the black family’s shack. They do it every morning…
In front of one of the shelters is an unsteady wooden bench and a
little girl is sitting there. The curls of her light brown hair cling to
her face and into her neck. Maybe she is three or perhaps six years
old. Children do not develop normally stuck in a place like this. Most
of the children are older than they appear to be. The little girl is
filthy, probably a few days dirt clinging to her body. She coughs as she
calls for her mother. “Her mother left here with the Nigerians and will
return with food for the baby tonight,” said the old man walking beside
me.
Tonight when the mother returns, she will walk over to the clustered shacks and RDP houses where
the black people of this place live. At least they have water and toilets. She will beg for a bowl of water to
wash off the stench from abusing her body. Everybody is doing it,
because running water and toilets promised three years ago, were never
delivered. The white people all go and beg for water to drink and wash
from the black shantytown.
The mother will try to clean her body but not the festering ulcer on
her mind, there is no cure, it is permanently etched into her mind. The
man will die from his wound and the black pastor will bury him near the
ashes. He will not be remembered. The little girl who might turn four,
or five or six next year does not know what fate beholds her, or
how long it will be before the Nigerians rape her or lure her into their prostitution ring. Simply because there is no one who can stop this worsening situation....................
READ THE ENTIRE STORY ON SOUTH AFRICA TODAY
This is the story about a white squatter camp situated on the West Rand Gauteng. This is the reality of what is happening in South Africa today, whites are forced into poverty by being excluded from the work place, there is no assistance from government and soon, we will all be murdered.........
