Crime against 'grime': how we fuel poverty

It's a constant onslaught. Maybe it's the world I inhabit: shopping districts with wide, paved walkways cool under large trees, plush pavements - some planted so thickly no pedestrian can walk on them, and online, where the rage continues daily. Poor people are not welcome.

We hear this in complaints about traders who sell their goods on pavements outside neighbourhood stores or who ring your intercom to sell a broom, or in the frequent comments online about "cleaning up" public parks .

Take the planned march against grime (later cancelled) in Sea Point, Cape Town, by DA ward councillor Shayne Ramsay, who said those participating would "kindly ask anyone planning on sleeping overnight to move along". Oh, and please, she added, "wear a white shirt to stand out in the dark and in the theme of cleanliness".

She clearly did not play the whole movie. Move along to where?

I wondered what DA leader Mmusi Maimane thought of this behaviour by one of his party's councillors. Before entering politics, Maimane worked on plans to provide shelter for homeless people (through this he developed a relationship with Ian Ollis, who eventually convinced him to join the party), as recounted in S'thembiso Msomi's book Mmusi Maimane: Prophet or Puppet?

When I asked him this week, Maimane was clear that the Sea Point march was not a DA-sanctioned event and not reflective of the party's policy, saying: "As South Africans, we have to find compassionate ways to help the poor." He added that good governance would address poverty, such as city and provincial administrations shelving vanity projects in favour of infrastructure that helps communities function. Like building roads, schools and clinics.

Maimane denied that middle-class DA supporters were anti-poor, saying that was a generalisation.

But is his message getting through to those (many of whom voted for the DA) who live in the leafy suburbs or on the Atlantic Seaboard? Or do they see the party as their tool for "cleaning up" their suburbs.

Globally, there are an estimated 100 million homeless people, according to the UN. And in South Africa, according to a Human Sciences Research Council 2008 study, there may be between 100,000 and 200,000 homeless people. Up-to-date statistics are hard to come by and, if you factor in those in South Africa who do not have adequate housing, we are talking about well over a million people. Globally, it's over a billion.

Worldwide, many homeless people are refugees fleeing war, natural disasters and poverty. In South Africa, the homeless are economic refugees. Why people are poor, homeless and struggling is surely not difficult to grasp.

In a country with a rising unemployment rate - now at 27.1%, the highest level in 13 years - and an expanded unemployment rate of 36.3%, there are few options for those who don't have work. And for those who do have a job earning a couple of thousand rands a month, there is no scope to create a safety net for tough times that might lie ahead.

With such extreme levels of unemployment, is it really such a stretch for those who live in comfort to consider what alternatives there are for those who are unemployed and homeless? And if it is possible to compute that, then what about considering what middle-class people do to contribute to homelessness and poverty?

In a very tangible way: by not paying people properly. For those who earn a bare minimum, like the person working to renovate your house (yes, it's the contractor who employs this person, but the homeowner can stipulate that fair wages are paid), the only option to make his earnings stretch may be to find a park to sleep in until the job is done.

As one person on the Facebook group This Dialogue Thing so succinctly put it: "How do white people have so much time (and money) to complain? Oh, wait, sitting on privilege while snacking on ignorance is our favourite pastime!"

Enslin-Payne is deputy editor of Business Times