Dignity Regained

Homeless people in Tshwane find it difficult to access public toilets in the City. The homeless are forced to relief themselves in public spots which leaves an unpleasant smell and images of human waste in the Capital, some near popular buildings and places of tourist attraction. This is due to fact that the homeless are denied free use of public toilets in the City by those who clean-up and safeguard the public toilets. This means that the homeless must pay a fee to again access. The fee ranges from R 2.00 to R 5.00 and the homeless cannot afford to pay for toilet use.

The initiative that was taken by Tshwane Leadership Foundation (TLF) was to approach the City of Tshwane Municipality about the challenge and find a solution. They were talks between TLF and the City of Tshwane to alleviate the challenge as quick as possible and to avoid further disturbances caused by the homeless relieving themselves in the City's places of interest.

The City of Tshwane's response was that there are public toilets in and around the City that the homeless can use for free. The City was than requested to indicate which public toilets in the form of a list. The municipality provided the list however, none of the listed public toilets were available for free use by the homeless. TLF made the City of Tshwane aware of this and explained that the homeless cannot afford to pay for making use of the toilets and that this forces the homeless to commit a crime daily by relieving themselves in public and that it infringes on some of the basic human rights of the individuals.

On days where the homeless can pay for access they get ill-treated by the caretakers of the public toilets. The municipality then promised to stop charging the homeless for making use of the public toilets in the City with immediate effect.

The homeless can now make use of some public toilets at no cost. The toilets are cleaned twice a week by municipal workers. The homeless are happy with the results of the initiative and believe that there is hope that other things like the availability of toilet paper and regular cleaning of the toilets will soon follow.

A lot of advantaged people look down on the homeless and seldom remember that they too deserve to be treated humanely and this makes our society discriminative and unfair. However, not everyone is like this and we are TLF care for the homeless.

Mmathabo Machoga

012 320 2123