Opposite an apartment block and behind the upmarket parts of a street in Pretoria East, where the large Menlyn Shopping Centre is located, is a small community that lives with no ablution services, no shelter, and uses the surrounding areas and bushes to relieve themselves.
They sleep in a row on the pavement of Delphi Road behind a Mercedes-Benz dealership, with some living on the street due to life’s hardships, some seeking job opportunities and some there for love.
TimesLIVE Premium visited the street and found rows of mattresses, blankets and belongings in refuse bags stuffed into supermarket trolleys and lined up on the pavement next to the Jimmy Aves Park.
This little community previously lived inside the park but were removed by the City of Tshwane last year to allow for rehabilitation and restoration of the park.
Sitting under a tree on a broken office chair was a transgender woman who had been living at the park and in Delphi Street for 10 years.
Dressed in a black kimono-style blouse with red trim on the sleeves, a wig with braids under a black bonnet and orange butterfly earrings with pink diamantes on the tail, Lizwile Nkosi Monamodi, 29, who goes by the name Lee, said she was abandoned by her mother as a child.
Born in Alexandra, she said in 2005 her mother left her and her brother at the police station before going to work.
“I didn’t know anything at the time. She never came back. But apparently her long-time friend knew her plans and knew she couldn’t take care of us. She followed my mom and found me at the police station with my little brother. My brother's father fortunately took him, but I was taken to North West by my mom's friend.
“I even use her surname because apparently I didn’t have a birth certificate nor a clinic card. So they registered me as their child,” she said.
At 13, she decided to leave North West for Johannesburg in search of her mother, stating she started to feel out of place at her new home. However in Johannesburg she faced hardships such as sexual abuse, violence and drug abuse while doing sex work.
“After that, I found myself in Pretoria. God has worked for me because I am free. I don’t do drugs, I no longer do prostitution. Just as long as I am able to breathe every day and do everything right. I am focusing on myself right now, but today, I am the enemy of the residents and the municipality. I know what is right and I will stand by it.”
She said there might be incidents where some vagrants get drunk and rowdy, but similar things happen in the apartment blocks nearby.
“People do get drunk and raise their voices, but even the people who live here do the same. During the festive season, we’ve heard and seen people fight in that block and get drunk and rowdy. But we are accused of being the main problem,” she said as she pointed at the Glen Park apartment block.
Sitting under the same large tree were other vagrants, including two women, one of whom left her home to live at the park for love.
The woman, 55, who wished to remain anonymous, came to Pretoria from Dobsonville, Soweto, in 2023 and was looking for piece jobs while living permanently in Delphi Street. Asked why she chose Pretoria, she said it was all because of love as she met a man in Johannesburg who swept her off her feet.
Her knight in shining armour declared his love for her and the two went on a date, she said.
“He took me to Menlyn Shopping Centre and we had a great time. He was so clean and dressed so nicely. After the date, he asked that we go back to his place and I agreed. We left the mall and took a walk. We entered the park and walked past groups of people. And he took me to a place with some blankets and I asked him why he brought me here. He then said, ‘I live here.’”
Asked whether she ditched her date after finding out he was homeless, she said she joined him under the blankets instead.
“I really love him. I am here for him. I went home a bit but came back, and I am permanently here now. He is at work at the moment. I am here for my boyfriend,” she said.
She was speaking while carrying a plastic bag filled with vetkoeks, pies and sandwiches she had received from good Samaritans.
These include four ladies who had arrived in a white bakkie with food, water in two-litre cooldrink bottles, and two large pots of hot soup.
“Would you like some vegetable soup or some tomato soup?” said Althea van der Ben, a member of the Choose Life Church in the east of Pretoria.
She said she had first heard of the vagrants from her son as he knew she had always wanted to start a soup kitchen. She and other members of her church, have been providing food and blankets to the vagrants every second Thursday for the past two years.
“My son used to come with me in the beginning because he thought it might be dangerous, but it wasn’t. I love them, they know I do. The church started having one or two services for them in the park,” said Van der Ben.
However, it was during those church services that the vagrants would be harassed by police.
“The police would come and take their things. We only had the service twice, and we stopped because they would confiscate their things. Or the police would drive past and shout at them to get out of there. And I would tell them they were hungry, and the police would drive on.
“Someone in the community said these are people who steal. And they are not because I know them. You get one or two people who resort to crime, but you get that everywhere. We would also buy blankets for them, but some criminals would steal them,” said Van der Ben.
Monamodi said she had previously found stolen goods inside the park but when she took them to the police, she was accused of theft.
“We are not the ones who commit crime here. There is a house that got broken into and TVs were stolen. All of a sudden the police chased us out of the park accusing us of breaking into people’s homes. Just because of an incident that we are not a part of, we are held responsible for it because we are living in the park,” she said.
While encouraging the vagrants to come to church, Van der Ben noticed a man in a vehicle filming them.
It was a resident who owned an apartment at Glen Park adjacent to where the vagrants stay.
Speaking to TimesLIVE Premium anonymously, he said he was taking footage to give to the body corporate to forward it to the City of Tshwane as basic human rights were being violated.
He said his main issue was that the city did not provide accommodation for the vagrants to ensure they lived with dignity.
“No-one cares about them. I want to hold the municipality accountable because it must ensure that it gives these people a proper place to stay and not just leave them to live in the streets. The municipality needs to find them a place for them to stay, then there won’t be any problem. Their safety is as important as ours, they are like our children. They even have to defecate in the streets and some good people bring them food, and we don’t have a problem with that, but they need water too.”
He said they have not experienced crime due to the vagrants but heard of one person trying to attack a security guard.
“What is important is the safety of these people. They need services, healthcare, housing and water as the constitution clearly states it’s the responsibility of the government. If they die here, what is going to happen? The metro police can come here and remove them, but where must they go?” he said.
Shortly after he left, a woman in a Mercedes-Benz stopped in front of the large tree. Monamodi ran to her car and came away with several plastic bags filled with cupcakes and milk tarts.
“Here is another good Samaritan. She comes here often,” said the anonymous woman who came to Pretoria for love.
About 30 vagrants were living on the street’s sidewalk, the majority of them recyclers or workers on construction sites and doing odd jobs.
Ward 83 DA councillor Andrew Lesch said the vagrants were removed from the park because they often started fires and municipal bylaws state parks should not be occupied at night.
They were offered alternative accommodation by the municipality, which he said they declined.
“We want to remove the people and have them in proper accommodation. Tshwane’s departments are all involved as well as social development and the Tshwane metro police department. It is not that all of them are homeless. Some sleep there because they work nearby but go home on weekends.
“It’s really uncomfortable to have them there because there are no toilets for them and they use the streets as toilets. All of them are South African citizens as the TMPD does regular operations with the Garsfontein police and the illegal foreign nationals are arrested.”
He said while some may consider the rights of the vagrants occupying property illegally, children lived nearby, and residents felt unsafe while being exposed to the stench of faeces.
“There are religious organisations that give the people along the road food and blankets, and while we must support homeless people, we must take them to places where support is efficiently given to them that is safer for everyone,” Lesch told TimesLIVE Premium.
City of Tshwane spokesperson Lindela Mashigo said the municipality would assess the homelessness situation in the area and come up with a relevant intervention.
This assessment would also determine if the vagrants would be interested in being relocated to shelters.
“However, with the experience of some similar hotspots in the Menlyn area, most homeless people are not willing to relocate to shelters because they prefer to be in those hotspots for possible employment and business opportunities. The people are mainly in those hotspots because they get opportunities. The people find the shelters very far and restrictive as most shelters are located in the inner city,” he said.
According to the Stats SA census, Tshwane has more than 10,085 homeless people. The municipality’s intervention on homelessness is guided by the Street Homelessness Policy.
Partnering with the Gauteng department of social development and non-profit organisations, homeless people are assisted with shelters that include free meals, skills development and psychosocial support.
“Homeless people are also linked with employment opportunities. The city assists homeless people who are in shelters ... fully equipped with water, ablution facilities and sleeping essentials such as blankets and mattresses or beds.
“Social development services are based on the will of those who require services. Social workers cannot force people to relocate to shelters. They equally cannot remove people in hotspots. Enforcement of by-laws will need to take place,” Mashigo said.
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