Fight for equal education, that is where it all starts… and stays.

Yes, society is not perfect, far from it. Yes, all of us created it.

No, capitalism cannot be blamed, individual actions can (No-one says you have to buy from the big guy). Fighting capitalism won’t work. To promote a (new) system that will work instead might, IF it works.

Egalitarian? Sure, if we can agree on the meaning of the word first (there are two totally different definitions: equal opportunity and equal economic status). It is human nature to compete and actually not in the interest of the species not to do so. I cannot agree with a lazy person sharing the fruits of my hard work. I would be willing to give him a helping hand to help himself, on the condition he does the same for another. Don’t blame successful people for the lack of success of another, it just gives the unsuccessful another excuse to continue.

Exploitation happens all the time, yes, and can only be fought by educating the exploited against it. “Don’t accept that gift, it always has a price tag”.

Fight hyper-individualism? Sorry pal, I actively promote it. There is so little of it left, all I see around me are advertising clones with no individuality.

Greed – Agreed. It is a disease brought on by fear of lack.

Statism – Meaning a stagnant status quo? Afraid it will stay that way until someone beat them and become top dog.

Cities create poverty and technological innovation.

They then wander about the centre of town and hang around at robots begging. I presume like car guards, they pay the bakkie driver a fee for delivery to and from their pitch. There are even tales of women renting out their kids to beggars, and most horribly, disfiguring their children to increase the sympathy take.

@Panchetta: I spent some time as a part-timer with the Umhlanga Protection Services in the 90′s before they were assimilated into the Durban Metro cops.

The Umhlanga Town Council didn’t want the Xmas holidaymakers pestered and quietly issued an informal instruction to the head of the UPS each year.

At the beginning of December we would round up all the street kids, vagrants, beggars, dronkies, people we knew were pickpockets and petty criminals. They were put in police transport waggons, driven up to near Pongola, almost into Swaziland and left there. We estimated that they would take at least a month to walk back, and hopefully would get stuck in Richards Bay or Ballito on the way.

It’s nothing new, and it happens in all towns.

More simply put, the best thing you can do for ‘the poor’ is to challenge capitalism and statism, which are the root cause of poverty in the first place.

“The assumption that what currently exists must necessarily exist is the acid that corrodes all visionary thinking.” – Murray Bookchin

The homeless, and everyone else for that matter, needs cheaper, quality education, job opportunities and confidence rebuilding, which I do spend my time and money on. I support numerous trolley scrap collectors by sorting my rubbish for easy, clean pickup by them. They don’t earn much but it is a start and believe me, by the mutual respect that exist in that relationship, I know I am doing the right thing. I am always fighting for micro businessmen and support them wherever I find them, as long as they abide by the law.

What the homeless does not need is to have their dignity demolished by becoming perpetual charity takers. The Constitution is big on dignity and respect. Ever read it and thought what it really means? Ever been on the receiving end of charity?

There are organisation that help these people to find themself again, like the numerous charity-funded shelters. The destitute must want help first and YOU and other well meaning people are taking their will to help themself away from them by supporting them on the street.

I think this was more of a right of passage writing this story than any actual journalistic piece of writing. We found squat. Everyone we spoke to said it happened – ‘just look around you’ – yet no one, not one person, had any facts. I won’t say it doesn’t happen, but how can this story not have one person knowing the facts? It’s all a little dubious to me.

@Rory Short: Ermm…That’s an entirely myopic view of the situation; there are fundamental systemic problems that prevent a large number of people from growing up ‘successfully’ (I’d love to know what you mean by this) and that render an equally large number of people homeless, due to no fault of their own.

I’m sure in your mind it’s a simple matter of ‘teh poor’ simply striving harder; that success in this matter is usually fuel for a Disney story should serve to indicate how rarely this (migration between classes) actually happens. I guess 99.99% of poor people just couldn’t be bothered to ‘lift themselves out of their current situation’, eh?