Dilemma of the outstretched hand

There's an urchin in rags who begs on the corner of Problem Mkhize and John Zikhali roads in Durban.

His face is set in a grimace of self-pity and he crushes my heart.

He looks like something out of Les Misérables, kneeling imploringly on the hot tar, grubby hands outstretched, and he triggers real discomfort.

Friedrich Nietzsche was right.

"Beggars should be entirely abolished! Truly, it is annoying to give to them and annoying not to give to them."

My mate Masood Boomgaard spent a couple of days interviewing Durban's boemelaars for a thought-provoking documentary on YouTube.

The men, women and children hustling on the streets know about the vicissitudes of life.

One dude said his misfortune started when his family spurned him because of his girlfriend.

His squeeze is Indian and he's white.

"They didn't like the interracial," he said, woefully rolling his r's.

Masood reckons if you shell out, it's no use giving less than R30, the average cost of a night at one of the city's many dodgy shelters.

(Incidentally, the same price of a whoonga hit, and the fellow at the vanguard of democratic love admitted that was his daily poison.)

Some beggars are a hoot. One fellow with a wide grin holds up a sign that reads: "Wife stolen by ninjas. Need money for karate lessons."

The occasional levity doesn't detract from the gravity of the problem, though.

One of eThekwini's most hardworking officials is Hoosen Moola.

He heads up Durban's inner city rejuvenation unit, iTrump.

He and his mates regularly hit abandoned buildings and spray the streets clean with high-pressure hoses.

Moola said about 1000 vulnerable people live rough on Durban's streets.

The charity iCare estimates about 200 of those are children.

Moola said modern day Fagans use the children to beg, others sexually abuse them and the rest fall victim to crime and drug abuse.

"You need time and effort to engage with the children," he told me.

"They need sustained support. Just getting them off the street is not enough."

Tom Hewitt is a surfer who hangs out at Addington Beach and has been given an MBE by Queen Lizzie for his efforts. He heads one of the few charities with any success with street kids.

Street life is tough, he said, but exciting.

Surfing offers the kids a high-intensity adrenalin rush as an alternative.

Not everybody wants to surf, though.

Last year, Moola proposed an idea that, alas, hasn't gained traction.

Give beggars tokens rather than money and they can redeem them at authorised shelters.

One token is worth a sarmie, for example, two for a hot shower, three for a bed for the night, four for a change of clothes, five and somebody will help you enrol in a school or type up your CV.

It is one of the best ideas to have come out of Durban and will be far more effective than the R2-million doled out by the city last year to 500 soup kitchens.

A newspaper last year established that it was a bit of a racket: some of the kitchens didn't even exist, while at others the gruel was really thin.

George Orwell hung with the poor and the desperate. His empathetic description of their lot is documented inDown and Out in Paris and London.

Tramps, he wrote, are ordinary human beings, but society despises them.

"Yet if one looks closely there is no essential difference between a beggar's livelihood and that of numberless respectable people. What is work? A navvy works by swinging a pick. An accountant works by adding up figures. A beggar works by standing out of doors in all weather getting varicose veins and chronic bronchitis. It is a trade like any other; quite useless, of course, but then, many reputable trades are quite useless."

Few people chose a life on the streets,but giving to beggars keeps them enslaved to the streets.

Ralph Waldo Emerson said: "Without a rich heart, wealth is an ugly beggar."

But the five bucks I toss through the window to assuage my middle-class guilt doesn't really give them a hand up.

I suppose I don't want them in my face, a constant reminder of society's failure, or my relative good fortune.

If they have to be there, I want my five bucks and two minutes of charity well directed, not used on whoonga or cheap wine.