[Image: Google Maps]
When the homeless people occupying land outside the Castle of Good Hope were evicted, it was thought to be a positive thing.
The eviction followed a Western Cape High Court mandate that required them to vacate by October 17 after the Department of Public Works and Infrastructure (DPWI) won a legal battle.
Under the court Sheriff’s supervision and with the assistance of the SAPS and Cape Town Metro Police, the eviction was carried out.
In understanding how the area became a make-shift village for society’s outcasts, the Castle of Good Hope CEO Calvyn Gilfellan explained that this community emerged during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Likewise in numerous other sites around the city centre, many of them still there today. Although we understood the socio-economic conditions that led to their dire situation, it was simply unbearable to see fellow human beings living in unsafe and unhealthy conditions among rodents and other pests. So, it was a humanitarian crisis that needed to be resolved.”
In the lead-up to the eviction, over 150 squatters accepted the City of Cape Town’s offer for dignified transitional shelter at Safe Spaces. Most relocated to the new 300-bed Ebenezer Safe Space in Green Point, while others opted for Culemborg Safe Space 2.
The city’s Safe Space model includes: dignified shelter, comfort and ablutions, two meals per day, access to a social worker on-site, personal development planning, various social services including IDs and social grant assistance, family reunification services, access to substance and alcohol abuse treatment, skills training, help finding a job, and access to Expanded Public Works Programme (EPWP) work placement.
However, the majority of those relocated from the Castle have since left Safe Space 2.
Carlos Mesquita, a former homeless man and founder of Outsider, a group advocating for dignified, sustainable solutions for the homeless, pointed out why many didn’t stay. He said these shelters follow outdated guidelines from the Provincial Department of Social Development’s White Paper on shelters, treating them as temporary, emergency solutions.
“Unfortunately, they never developed a policy that tells the sector what happens after those three months are up,” Mesquita reveals.
“And so, despite 20-odd years later still not having anywhere to send people to after that initial period, these facilities still enforce either a three-month to six-month maximum stay.”
“The court order for those at the Castle specifically prohibited that from being implemented for those being evicted from the Castle but then again, the city failed to keep any of its commitments that were made a condition of the court order being granted.”
Now, most of the Castle people are living on the station deck, and on the street between Central police station and the Magistrate’s Court building, Mesquita said.
“They are packed there like sardines at night although they are being routinely harassed by CCID and law enforcement. A group of about 20 moved into Maitland near the station.”
GOOD City of Cape Town Councillor Axolile Notywala said ‘Safe spaces’ are “nothing more than a band-aid solution to a systemic crisis”.
“But also this speaks to the ill-treatment of the occupants in those spaces. On the streets, the homeless are not governed by others’ rules and regulations,” he added, noting how part of the challenge is that the safe space operators and staff treat residents as if “they are lesser beings and adults are being treated as if they have no mental capacity”.
The problem, he notes, is that residents are afforded no agency over their own lives and futures.
“The City has no intention of addressing homelessness. They know well what they are doing wrong but it works in their favour to offer cosmetic solutions and then blame the homeless for not making use of these facilities.
“They know full well an uninformed public will stop having compassion and empathy to the point where they will support City interventions that are inhumane and illegal,” Mesquita said.
Xolile added that on top of the degrading conditions, the restrictions of these shelters are not geared towards supporting efforts to find or create work for themselves to get them off the streets.
And so the issue persists…
[Source: IOL]
