'We do not have the right to force any human being into institutionalisation to clean up the social dynamics of our country'
Cape Town is planning performing arts training for its street children, but Johannesburg has told nongovernmental organisations about temporary solutions that include moving the problem out of sight, "away from the city".
Durban has identified a site - in the shabby Warwick Triangle precinct in the city, where tourists are unlikely to venture - to house street children leading up to the World Cup.
Bill Rogers from the Addiction Action Campaign, who attended a meeting with Johannesburg's Displaced Persons Unit this week, said: "We were made aware of the city's plans to relocate thousands of homeless people to shelters away from the city."
Said Rogers: "There is a lot of negativity surrounding street children because they have become associated with crime.
"We were made aware of the city's plans to relocate the more than 15000 homeless people to shelters away from the city. This plan seems to have become more urgent and one wonders if this process is not being speeded up in an attempt to rid the streets of the homeless before the 2010 World Cup."
This move has been met with outrage by members of a Facebook group called Stop Concentration Camps for Homeless People. One posted a note that read: "This is very exciting, that the people in power see the need to take the people off the streets - just remember it does not take 30 days over (the) World Cup to take the streets out of the people.
"We do not have the right to force any human being into institutionalisation to clean up the social dynamics of our country."
Father Laszlo Karpati from the Yithuba Lami shelter for children in Brixton, Johannesburg, said he had been involved in meetings with the city where the opening of two shelters had been discussed.
"One will be for children and the other for mothers with children," said Karpati, who was also concerned about the short-sightedness of the plan.
Violet Modise, who develops programmes for Johannesburg's Displaced Persons Unit, said interventions were aimed at restoring "the dignity of the homeless".
She said the unit's social workers helped the homeless to find shelter, apply for social grants and even reunite with their families.
"Street children are only a fraction of (who) we find on our streets. There are homeless adults, some even disabled and blind. We try our best to find shelters, but this can't be their permanent residence," she said.
Under Cape Town's Second Chance initiative, street children will undergo performing arts training from groups including the Zip Zap Circus School and the Cape Dance Company.
"This is one of many programmes we have designed to break the cycle of poverty among street children in Cape Town," said Mansoor Mohamed, executive director for economic, social development and tourism in Cape Town.
He said the project would run throughout the year and be "accelerated" during the World Cup.
In addition, tourists in the Mother City would be discouraged from dishing out cash to beggars.
Instead, Cape Town was developing a programme allowing tourists to buy food or shelter vouchers to hand these out to the needy instead of cash.
Cape Town's chief of special law enforcement services, Rudolph Wiltshire, said 170 new seasonal law enforcement officers would be appointed next month. They would undergo "sensitivity training programmes" to help reintegrate street people back into their communities and their families. He said they had already successfully reintegrated 30 people.
In Durban, the head of eThekwini Municipality's Safer Cities project, Martin Xaba, said a site to house the homeless and street children had been identified in the Warwick Triangle precinct but "nothing has been made official yet".
Xaba said housing street children was one of the biggest challenges the city faced - and that many would still be on the streets of Durban during the World Cup.
"But 2010 will come and go, so we need to look beyond that," he said.
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