36. Contextual Chapter: 1 January 2006

Time flies!
It’s been seven and a half years since I first stepped foot on the soil of Cape Town, South Africa; two and a half years since I wrote the original text of this book!
Though I have moved into a community project, to actually try and move away from the streets and get to the root of “the problem”, my heart still pumps with passion and excitement for the kids downtown, and I have managed to keep in contact with them.
I still receive about two to five reverse charge calls a day from the kids downtown, and I visit often, which has helped me keep my “ear to the streets”.
Many people that have read this book have been curious to know what has happened in the past two and a half years since I wrote it. Well…
I have seen ten years of democracy come and go. In the same year I witnessed the mayor of Cape Town make a statement that in “a year’s time there will be no more street children”. As much as I wanted that to happen, I think we all realized that was a bit of an unrealistic and uninformed goal.
Within that year we all saw desperate attempts to try and “clean up the streets”, with the children being picked up in huge groups and taken to the police station. The worst example being in early 2005, with the police’s brutal, self appointed, initiative to try and round up the “street kids” and get them on their database.
Though the database is a great idea and an important part of the bigger picture, the police’s tactics seemed to be contextually out of date, and sound more like a story from the dark years of the Apartheid.
For those of you that do not know what happened…the police went around town, approaching the children, telling them that they were throwing a big party for them. The children were, of coarse, excited about this and so they all willingly jumped into the police bakkies, excitedly anticipating their party.
After about fifty kids were rounded up, the “party mood” was quickly snuffed out when the kids were loaded out of the police trucks and into the downtown police cells. The children were finger printed and photographed one by one, in order for the police to record their data.
When individuals from several different NGO’s heard this, they went down to the police station to find out what was going on, only to be met with hostility and police resistance. The situation got out of hand and the police ended up pepper spraying the group of NGO members.
Moving on…
I managed to escape being a victim of two more hijackings. The hijackers tried to use a big rock as a weapon, in the first of the two attempts.
They must have thought I was a real green horn.
I think they got the shock of their life when I tried to run them over! I still need to write to the window manufacturers of my car and tell them how pleased I am that the window didn’t break when the amateur hijackers tried to bash it open with a rock.
The second of the two attempts was only with one gun, and the gangster also was surprised when I tried to ride him over.
I have seen more knives, more broken bottles, more guns, and have lost many more friends and brothers to the clutches of the streets. I have also managed to graduate from University of Cape Town with a Bachelor of Social Sciences degree in Social Work with a psychology stream. And with all of these things, I have had the consistent and increasing belief that it is actually a crime for us as society to allow children to live on the streets!
I still feel strongly, now more than ever, that children should be children and it is child abuse to allow them to live on the streets, taking on adult roles, taking part in extremely adult activities.
It is up to us as society to take that role back.
So, I have ventured into some “new territory” to try and fight this issue on a larger level. The first of these, which I already mentioned, was pursuing studies in Social Work.
For the first two and a half years of working with the kids, I never felt incompetent on a skill or knowledge level, and I was a “student of the streets”, but I cannot even count the number of times I hit a brick wall on the logistical and structural side of things, because I had no “backing” to my name.
These ranged from trying to find placements for children that made the decision to come off of the streets, to just being taken seriously as a professional, and not just some crazy American “street kid”.
In the first year of my studies I really struggled to find the balance between my work with the kids and my responsibility towards my studies. I will not say I ever mastered it, but it did get better. Though it was a sacrifice of time and energy, I am pleased that I stuck it through and achieved that goal I set for myself.
My second “move”, which I have also already mentioned, was moving my energies and attention from the streets to the community.
During my first year of studies I came to the realization that, though I absolutely loved working on the streets and could do it for the rest of my life, that if intervention did not take place in the communities, I would be doing just that, working on the streets FOR THE REST OF MY LIFE!
Not to mention all those that will come after me.
I realized that if we can get into the communities and make an impressionable impact, we can actually work towards cutting off the flow of children running to the streets. So I knew what I was feeling but I sat with the overwhelming feeling of “where do I start”.
Not too long after that I met up with Ginger Mapasa, who was coaching amateur boxing in an area called Town Two Khayelitsha. Boxing is a personal interest of mine, and I was doing boxing training at the time to try and stay fit.
That, mixed with the fact that boxing is an amazing outlet for youth at risk, inspired me to begin work with Ginger on a more permanent basis.
The thing that I had witnessed all these years is that there are few “structures of support” for the youth in the communities that the “street kids” come from. My goal was to begin to create, at least one of these support structures, in at least one area, no matter how small the beginning was.
Ginger and I got other willing comrades on board and we started Town Two Sports Academy (http://www.freewebs.com/towntwo).
The vision of the organization is to use sport and recreational activities to keep the youth active, but also use these programs to highlight other needs and struggles in their lives, intervening where possible. There are sports programs and recreational activities in the communities, but these take place for a few hours a day.
Town Two Sports Academy is trying to offer holistic support for the youth.
At present we have boxing, netball, basketball and traditional dance running, along with a part time social worker coming to do individual work with the kids and families, and group work. We hope to move on to other programs such as music, art and other sports. The need is great!
My third “move” to try and impact the “problem” on a larger level was to use music. I decided to use hip hop to get out the message of what is going on, on the streets of Cape Town, and try and raise consciousness and awareness as to the complexity of the situation of the “street kids”.
I recorded a full length, fourteen song, album which I have entitled Hangin’ In and Hangin’ On. I have enjoyed performing in many places and getting the message out about what is really going on on the streets.
I look back to that situation of police brutality that I spoke about earlier where more than fifty kids were picked up.
Well, I could really only laugh when I heard about that event. Not at all because I thought it was funny, but because it allowed me to see how things have not really changed, but I have changed my strategy, and I am now working on a different level.
A couple of years ago, it would have been me out there, fighting the police, getting pepper sprayed, and probably getting locked up myself. And, though I am glad that there are still people there on the ground level to continue that type of work, I can see that my purpose is now to work in a different realm.
So no, I wasn’t there outside the police station, getting pepper sprayed and battered by the police, but I was downtown on a Saturday night, a week later, performing in a concert put on by the Central Improvement District, and THAT is where MY voice was heard.
I laughed when I was on stage performing my first song, when I saw a group of about ten police officers walk up, knowing that my next song deals with the issues of police brutality and sexual exploitation of the kids.
When my first song ended, as the music continued to play, I began to speak.
“I have worked with the youth living on the streets of downtown Cape Town for four and a half years…”
The group of about fifteen “street kids” that were planted right in front of the stage screamed excitedly at that point, and I continued, “…and I have seen some appalling things!! We live in a day when the police think that they can come and round up fifty of OUR children…fifty innocent children…and put them behind bars, just to get them on their data base!”
At this point I had the attention of the entire audience, and as I pointed over to the poor group of police officers, they quickly began to timidly walk away from the scene.
I continued, “…they expect society to stand by in its complacency and not do or say anything about it!!! YOU are that society that I am talking about! These are not just ‘my’ kids, or ‘their’ kids, these are OUR children, and together WE are responsible for them!!”
With the intro to my next song almost over, I then began the song.
It is amazing for me to stand up there on the stage and look down at the kids; looking into their eyes and seeing the excitement and pride that they have for me being up on stage, see them helping me out by singing along with me though they don’t even know the words, and giving me the occasional thumbs up to encourage me to keep going. It is also amazing to see the crowd, average members of society, truly listening to my words, and actually grabbing onto what I am saying.
After I finished my songs, right as I stepped off stage, I was mobbed by a group of excited loving kids.
They all had an amazing sense of pride as they grabbed my hand, congratulated me, bragged about my music, and just came to give me hugs. One of the older kids said, “You have great songs about the street kids!! You are singing FOR US!!!” It encouraged me to know that, though that is my plan, the kids not only see it, but they respect and appreciate it.
I have also been amazed at the way “society” has received the message of my music.
Since it is hip hop, I expected the younger generation to like it, especially since they like to compare me to “Slim Shady”, but the amazing and exciting thing for me has been the wide range of people that approach me after the shows. I have had grown ladies, that could be my mother, come up to me after the shows and tell me how they loved my music and for me to keep it up.
They usually start off with, “I CAN’T STAND rap, but…” or “I HATE IT that my son listens to rap but…” and then they go on to tell me how they listened to my words and are happy that finally there is a positive message going out.
My fourth big “move” was, well, writing this book.
Now the responsibility lies with you, the reader! If something, anything, you have read has moved you, bothered you, angered you, touched you, made you feel uncomfortable, or even made you laugh, please don’t leave it at just emotions. Let those feelings and emotions drive you to make a change in our society!
No one person can do it alone and it is going to take ALL of us to conquer this injustice!
I will continue to try and get a positive message out, along with the reality of the situation of the streets, but I realize that I alone do not hold the answer to the “children’s” problems; as does no other one individual. But I recognize that, though it is an extremely complex situation, if I do my part, the mayor does her part, the NGO’s do theirs, the average member of the public does his or hers, and yes, even the police do theirs, then we can all work together to try and better the lives of these children.
If we can manage to put aside our pride, organizational politics, grudges, and other silly things that are only working against us, and if we as society, can all work together at trying to truly seek and obtain solutions and answers for these children, then maybe one day we will be able to say that there are no more “street children”.
I sure hope so!!