It’s all a game of Risk

As I left the apartment yesterday morning, head filled with the tasks and preoccupations of your average Tuesday, I realized I couldn’t open the door to the street.

Perplexed (and a bit alarmed since I was already running late), I put my shoulder into it and shoved. There were some scuffling sounds and a muffled voice said, “ok, you can come out now.”

The voice belonged to a woman who was sleeping in our doorway. No doubt seeking a bit of cover from Cape Town’s fast impending winter in the small recess between the street and the front door to our flat block.

I felt a spark of annoyance, followed immediately by shame, as I stepped over the cardboard she had been laying on. I mumbled something like, “I’m sorry, I need to get out,” and hurried on my way.

Heart pounding in my ears, I rounded the corner to see a security guard from a neighboring apartment block threatening a man with a long stick, chasing him away from the trash bins on the street.

All I could think then, throughout the day, and now is: how do I see and experience things like this and then continue to function - but still be human? And/or: how do I allow myself to be broken open by them and continue to function?

This is not a new question I’m asking myself. In many ways I find that for me at least, this is what it means to work on human rights: bearing witness to the brokenness of it all without becoming completely dehumanized. Or completely incapacitated by despair.

This is also not an entirely new experience I’m having. As in many other places in the world, my neighborhood’s already prominent unsheltered population ballooned during the pandemic. For the four plus years I’ve lived here, Sea Point has seemed to me characterized - if not defined - by its unhoused residents and the debate swirling around “what to do” about them.

One of the most bizarre and extreme examples of this happened a few years ago, when a neighborhood man was targeted for handing out food to people on the street. This was at the height of the 2020 lockdown, when unhoused people were struggling even more since everyone who had a home was required by law to stay in it. For some of the Sea Point elite, who feel that people experiencing homelessness should be tucked away in shelters - far from their sight and property values - this man’s acts of kindness were a call to NIMBY arms. The well-known owner of a local holistic pet food store took it upon himself to publish the Good Samaritan’s full name and address and a description of his car and license plate, arguably leading to the firebombing of that car soon after. (The business owner later ran for city council on an anti-homelessness platform - and won. But that is another rant for another time.)

Suffice to say, I am no stranger to coexisting with houselessness - here, in Mexico City, in New York City, in Philly. When I walk past people lying on the sidewalk, I pause to make sure they’re still breathing. I leave little parcels of food and clothing around. I ask myself what more I can do, knowing whatever it is won’t be enough. This is, however, the first time I have actually pushed up against the exposed, cold body of another human being in order to leave my safe, warm house.

But but but - I’m actually not here to write a treatise on the crisis of houselessness in South Africa. Lots of excellent work is being done on this topic by people far more qualified than me. I am trying (however inarticulately) to describe the thread I see connecting this with a few other things...

Thing 1: A few days ago, the U.S. ambassador accused South Africa of arming Russia. The fact that he suspects this is unsurprising - who doesn’t? (The ANC’s refusal to update its mystifying apartheid-era loyalty to Russia is well known. And why else would SA allow Russian ships to dock at a naval base in Cape Town and invite China and Russia to perform joint military exercises off the coast - in the middle of a war?) The fact that he said it, though - that is interesting. Dare I say, refreshing.

The rand subsequently crashed against the dollar. Reuben Brigety apologized - but did not recant. And suddenly, just this morning, SA’s president announced an intended “peace mission” with other African leaders to end the war in Ukraine. Curiouser and curiouser.

Thing 2: my conversation with a South African friend the other day. She’s bright, creative, and hard working. And she’s leaving - indefinitely - in a few weeks’ time. She didn’t want to join the wave of emigration, but once it became clear that our new normal of 11+ hours of blackouts daily (more on that in my last blog) would not be changing anytime soon, she started looking for work in Europe. She has a solid job here - no small feat in a country with the highest unemployment rate in the world - but just she can’t see a future for herself. How does she find a partner when everyone her age (who can) is abandoning the country? How does she invest in a place whose infrastructure buckles more every day, and whose political elite won’t stop squabbling long enough to do anything about it? How does she hold on to her humanity as she watches the 10% of the SA population that controls over 80% of the wealth pull up the drawbridges to their solar powered fortresses?

Human beings forced to sleep in the street; the most unequal society in the world arming Russia; the worst power outages on record; still rising unemployment; a tanking rand; bright young people exiting stage left. There are probably many ways to connect these dots, but the thread for me is somewhere in the struggle to remain human instead of a piece being moved around a giant Risk board.

How to retain my humanity - to see and be broken open by the woman in my doorway, to remember that our roles could so easily be reversed - and then continue on to work, to change and godwilling dismantle the systems that dehumanize us both.

Ok, that is not a great conclusion. But it’s all I got right now. Looking out the window at the cold, grey rainy afternoon, I can’t imagine a pithy way to tie this up.

But I guess that’s also human.