“How old do you think I am?” asks Abdul Smith, tilting his head. Sharp cheekbones stand out in a face framed by a trimmed beard and hair flecked with silver. I guess late 40s. In reply, Smith proudly reveals he is 61, reciting his ID number as proof. He has an ID, unlike many people who live on the streets.
The lines on Smith’s face do not show that he has been living rough for nearly 20 years in Cape Town, more than half of them with his girlfriend Rene Williams. When I ask Williams about their relationship, he jumps in before she can answer. Checking his gaunt face in a shard of mirror, he says: “She likes me for my complexion and I look like a bodybuilder.”
“He looks after me and I look after him,” says Williams, laughing with him. “I also love him because he was in prison for 22 years and, from that time, he never went back [to crime].”
The couple reside in the shadow of St Mary’s Cathedral. From their plastic-sheeting shelter they look out on the Louis Botha statue guarding the entrance to parliament. Another homeless person, Zandile Christmas Mafe, has been charged with arson in connection with the fire that tore through the National Assembly at the start of the new year.
“You may have noticed, I haven’t got a luxury life. From the time my mother was alive, she asked for a girlfriend for me who would look after me. She said no-one else will spoil me,” says Smith.
His attachment to Williams and his mother run through all his conversation, and a faded outline of a heart on his right arm is the only tattoo he admits to, despite decades in prison.
In contrast, his new friend, Charles “Whitey” Carstens, 36, is covered in tattoos. But the only ones visible on the rainy day we meet are three small triangles and a line on his wrist, when he reaches out to gently stroke his floppy puppy.
Once he has introduced the incongruously named “Rambo” — Carstens likes the movie — he tenderly wraps the puppy back up in a scrap of green blanket, one of two he owns. He attaches Rambo’s collar to a leash, which he then anchors with a brick next to a bowl of water to keep him safe from the traffic — back in full force now that Covid has abated.
“What I’m eating, my puppy eats,” says Carstens, a boilermaker who has not been able to find work since he moved from eThekwini to Cape Town June last year. When a man offers to give him clothes, he says: “Do you have any dog food?”
He also shares what he gets with Smith, who has taken him under his wing. It works both ways. Smith says of his younger friend: “He is kwaai. If he buys food, he buys for me and I share with him.”
Carstens left a two-bedroom flat in eThekwini in June to escape the sorrow that engulfed him after his wife, Chantelle, died of Covid the month before. “It was too hard for me, and I wanted to kill myself,” he says.
He is unable to speak about what happened to his two boys of five and seven, but his eyes appear haunted. “This puppy is like a child to me, my best friend,” he says. “I can tell him everything and he won’t tell nobody what I told him. I love animals.”
Carstens, a fit-looking man, never expected to end up sleeping on the pavement, given his skills — which include underwater welding — and experience in stainless steel construction.
“A lot of people told me there was work in Cape Town, so I sold my flat and my car and I came here. And here I am in Hope Street,” he says, pausing as the cathedral bells start to ring the hour, drowning out the boom of the noon gun on Signal Hill.
Carstens’s senses, and reflexes, have been sharpened by seven months living outdoors. When I flick a cockroach off my jeans — we are sitting next to a gutter, on the lookout for security guards — he crushes it instantly.
Carstens saw Mafe two or three times in the past months. “We did not know each other personally, but we all recognise each other.”
He says trust is a scarce commodity on the streets. “I broke my foot in two places and when I went to Somerset Hospital all my things were stolen. All I’ve got left is a mattress, two blankets and another pair of clothes.”
For 19 years I have been on the road, and for the first 10 I was alone and then I met this girl. By the end of the day, we were friends
— Abdul Smith
His bond with Smith, who calls him “Whitey”, seems solid, however. “From day one I met Abdul and he is my best friend until now,” says Carstens.
Before darkness falls, Carstens has claimed his spot on the pavement under a narrow eave, in front of a shutdown laundromat and spa. The only hint of his puppy, now tucked under his blankets, is a bowl of pellets given to him.
“Nowhere on the streets is safe but I don’t like shelters,” says Carstens. “You are not allowed to go out and I want to be free.” He says he does not use drugs, which are prohibited in shelters, as are pets.
It costs more than R1,000 a month to stay in a shelter, says Smith, explaining why he and Williams can't afford it.
As the light fades I go looking for Smith and Williams in Bouquet Street where they have slept for the past few months. A man is sweeping the pavement with a broken broom; when I ask if he knows where they are, he replies warily: “Why do you want them?” Then he relents: “If you move fast, you’ll catch them.”
I see a sauntering silhouette and the red hoodie Williams had on earlier disappearing in the distance and run to catch up as they walk to the station to look for food, stompies and an ATM to check their Capitec bank balance. They look like a married couple out for an evening stroll as they greet people in the doorways opposite the Parade in front of City Hall.
“Is it safe to be here?” I ask, as the shadows lengthen. Smith says he will protect us, reminding me he is a reformed gangster. At the station, a dealer moves in to find out if I am there to buy drugs and Smith waves him away.
There is no money in their account — Smith does odd jobs in Rondebosch, where he used to stay, and sometimes family members deposit funds — but they find a piece of bread, which Williams eats walking back. A diabetic, she must avoid sugar, and Smith is an asthmatic who must carry a pump. That does not stop him scrounging for any stompie he can find, but on a rainy day he is out of luck. Smith says that when he was young his mother made him eat a cigarette butt after she caught him smoking.
The scent of roses drifts up as we pass the flower-sellers with their bright buckets, who shout greetings as we stroll back towards parliament.
Interviewed separately, Smith and Williams each told me about how they met in a Woodstock park, where Smith charmed Williams — the mother of six boys and one girl — away from her life in Manenberg on the Cape Flats.
“For 19 years I have been on the road, and for the first 10 I was alone and then I met this girl. By the end of the day, we were friends,” says Smith, of the churchgoing Williams.
A Muslim, he has accompanied her to the Hillsong church, where he finds the preaching in Afrikaans “more comfortable” than the Arabic at the mosques he attends.
Reminiscing about his mother, Smith says: “I must show her respect and have manners. I remember my mother gave me a 21st in Bonteheuwel with her money.” His brother and sister and their families live in Tafelsig, about 30km away.
The number of Capetonians who sleep in shelters, out of 6,175 people without homes
- City of Cape Town 2018 census
— 2,084
When Smith left school he became a fisherman, catching snoek and packing fish in Saldahna. But when the work dried up he got into crime, and was convicted of armed robbery.
“When I was young, I was onbeskof and stupid, into drugs and robbery, armed robbery. I was with skollies,” he says.
His mother died while he was locked up. Stricken at the memory, he bends over to compose himself, before saying: “There I was lying on my bed, my hands behind my head, looking up and thinking: 'What will I do when I get out?’
“I changed my behaviour and was not fighting and doing drugs. I did not want to die and I stopped everything,” says Smith. “God helped me get out, to get parole. I have God in my brains. It does not matter which religion.”
Inside his hokkie, a Bible lies on top of their mattress. Table Mountain has vanished into the cloud and the mist is swirling down the mountain as the night sets in.
“Do your children worry about you being on the streets?” I ask Williams.
Smith looks at her, impishly. “You know what her children say to her? They say: ‘You have been with Abdul so long. Why don’t you marry him!’”
Williams just gives a Mona Lisa smile.
HELPING HANDS
Streetscapes, U-Turn, Ladles of Love, Souper Troopers and The Rehoming Collective (Our House and Rainbow House) are among the NGOs helping those who live on Cape Town’s streets. The Hope Exchange provides a place to wash and meals for the community who live around Hope Street and parliament.
Would you like to comment on this article?
Sign up (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.