Beggars

Like every South African, I’m all beggared out. Every stop street, traffic light and intersection there’s a beggar. At first one tries to help as many as you can, but after a time, it palled and you stopped giving. What I found the right thing for me to do was to support one or two beggars as much as I could. At least, it was more substantial to those and not a diluted contribution to all.

However, the other day, I saw a beggar, a tall, white man, around thirty, I estimated. He was dressed in casual clothing, and it was well kempt, obviously not been slept in. He was at a traffic light near a shopping centre and was waving at all the cars in the hope of getting something. As I mentioned earlier, we are all tired of being begged upon, so nobody gave him anything. This young man then did something that made me think again. He sat down on a turf mound next to the kerb and started to cry. What level of despair and lost hope led to this? In this case it was a white man, but like all of us, I have seen this in many black people, male and female. It begs the question, “how can we help?”

It made me dissatisfied with myself, after all who gave me the right to judge someone down on his luck? He might be a drug addict, alcoholic or just a wastrel, or he could be out of work with a family to feed and could find no other way of providing that simple fatherly duty. 

As a very wise person once said, “whatever the recipient of your largess does with your donation is none of your business.”

I resolved to give him whatever I could afford when I finished shopping, but unfortunately, he had left the corner and was nowhere to be seen. I wonder where he is now? I hope he is successful in getting something to help.

We need to start a collective organisation to reach as many as we can.