Malusi seemed happy enough with the kit I’d left him with recently, on a street corner in Norwood: a leather jacket salvaged from the top of the bins at my complex, a pair of worn boots, and a bag of shirts, jerseys and socks. Also, R200 for the golf balls he’d picked up at the Killarney Country Club — I imagine.
He hobbled off in his new lummy, both uplifted and condemned by my charity, such as it was.
I started helping Malusi during lockdown, when he appeared in the road, ragged and hungry, but in good spirits. He’d suffered a stroke, three years earlier, at age 23, and after being on a disability grant, the powers that be decided nothing less than a full medley of medical tests was required to continue it. You’d think they’d selected him for astronaut training.
Such wondrous efficiency from Sassa — but are all their “ghost” aunties and uncles beneficiaries subject to such scrutiny? Anyhow, the prospect of those doctors and tests seemed beyond Malusi somehow.
When I left Malusi’s neighbourhood (he stayed in Yeoville before he relocated to the genteel avenues of Killarney), it was decided I’d send him an instant money voucher every month, until he could jump through Sassa’s flaming hoops.
So, I’d get a call from the phone of a stranger he’d hooked up with, usually a security guard or a street vendor, and I’d do the on-screen banking app gymnastics to top him up with about R200.
Some months ago, in a vain attempt to cut costs, I told Malusi that after four years of helping him, I could no longer do so. He took it surprisingly well. And what harm in exerting a little pressure to find a job? Wasn’t my charity a guarantee he’d never progress? But progress to where, I wondered. Am I my brother’s keeper?
His keeper maybe, but wouldn’t it be better if he could become his own? And that’s how charity got a bad name, I suppose, victim to the notion that helping someone “degrades” them. With charity discarded in favour of the hands-off, industrial-sounding “structural change”, the new commandment became “teach the man to fish”.
It seems Malusi is stuck in the fish phase (sans fish), and has yet to move to fishing. Or is it many loafers, no fish?
How happy I was to tell him I didn’t have cash, and how I cursed when he persuaded me to send him R50 on his phone as he stood next to me
You’ve got to feel for the poor: they alone are described as having “a lot”, which is odd because when talking about “the lot of the poor”, it’s cruel because they don’t have “a lot” at all. Meanwhile, no-one speaks of “the lot of the rich”. The poor are the subject of countless songs and paintings that earned their creators millions, from which they’ve seen nothing. And now the poor are blamed for being poor. They keep politicians in power and enrich capitalists by keeping wages low, and their reward is being told to learn to fish? And also, that “they’ll always be with us”. Hardly encouraging.
Anyway, some weeks after having sent Malusi “fishing”, I got a WhatsApp from a number I didn’t recognise. A friend of his, saying he was laid low and fearing he’d have to return to his hometown, Umlazi, Durban. Terrible fate, it seems. It emerged I was the problem. Cutting him loose had robbed him of hope. I made a truce offer: I’d pay for another six months.
Financial technology makes it possible to send money to anyone, anywhere. And not a moment too soon, as cash exits the stage. For those putting in a shift at the traffic lights, it’s a blow to their incomes. and it is increasingly, if reluctantly, accepted by your more fintech-savvy beggar that it’s not that unusual for a white person to never have cold, hard cash.
Still, don’t become complacent. Once I made the mistake of befriending a Rasta-style beggar at a robot on my way to work and the dreaded daily encounter with Peter Bruce. Later, I gave the Rasta a TV set as full and final settlement to avoid further demands. Years later, as I waited for an order at the Nando’s near his traffic lights, he materialised beside me. Still poor, he said. How happy I was to tell him I didn’t have cash, and how I cursed when he persuaded me to send him R50 on his phone as he stood next to me.
But back to Malusi. The day after I reinstated him on the payroll, I got a message from the same number he’d used to solicit his voucher PIN. A stranger, asking on the off-chance whether I couldn’t possibly spare him R100 as well. I had to admire his chutzpah, and though I refused, I later wondered whether the laugh wasn’t worth a hundred.
Too late — I’d already deleted the number. Close call, though.
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