A video was shared recently on a social media group. The video shows homeless people making homes adjacent to the Castle of Good Hope in Cape Town. The video was accompanied by this comment:
Gra: This was posted on another group. People ask if we can honestly call this one of the world's best tourist destinations. A group of Israelis I was touring with today asked me what is being done to house the homeless and how can the city allow this to happen. This is not the only place this is occurring.
Derek: Tnx Gra. We need to embrace what is real. The homeless do not have a place to go to.
To which I made a comment:
Me: I have very mixed feelings on this subject. I have dealt with many homeless people. I contribute to many homeless shelters. I believe that some of the people who go to homeless shelters go there hoping that they can improve their lives so that they can become the opposite of being homeless and provide for others.My grave concern is for many that appear to me to choose to remain homeless, receiving, but with no real determination to be contributors. I worry that I may, at times, have added to the problem by giving to some beggars who are still just beggars years later, begging at an intersection where others are trying to sell stuff in order to earn a living. Begging in places where there is a lot of litter and they don't care enough to clean up what they appear to choose as their home.I am glad that we're told to not judge, but to leave judging to Him who knows the heart. I happily lay the burden of judging at His feet and just try to give responsibly in the hope that I will be judged fairly.
Some chatting about the plight of homeless people, followed be:
Derek: Which ever way we look at it. The homeless population (for whatever reason) is growing exponentially, and are being more restricted for places to go to.
My response: I've often looked at them and wondered why most of them are not at their fatherland farming and providing food and employment for people rather than hoping that someone will provide for them.
I've looked at pictures of starving people in various countries and they are surrounded by open land with no crops growing.
I've spoken to someone who abandoned his farm because the irrigation does not work. When I asked him why he didn't fix it he replied that the white man does that.
Each person needs to find solutions rather than being stymied by problems and always expecting someone to provide for them. We changed our babies' nappies, fed them and clothed them. But we expected them to grow up and become self-reliant.
Our constitution states that every citizen has equal rights and spells out those rights. Then it says that every citizen has equal responsibility. I have yet to hear any politician tell the citizens of South Africa to not expect the government to be responsible for each person's rights but that each citizen has the responsibility to ensure the rights of every other citizen. That is what democracy is...
Further discussion over a few days, and then a response to my previous comment:
Unknown responder: You’re making an assumption that these people are all black when in fact there are increasing numbers of white ex-middle class people amongst these homeless. This US and THEM talk is very counterproductive and creates more problems than it solves.
So, I wonder if the US or THEM refers to homeless vs homed, black vs white. US and THEM also often refers to privileged vs underprivileged, advantaged vs disadvantaged, straight vs gay, or any other 'opposite' groups, but in either sense, I believe that I can affiliate to some degree with each of these groups.
I grew up in a family with a reasonable home, but we had a simple old car, and generally simple things. I remember feeling really privileged when my father bought a slide projector. This was the 'entry level projector' that was fully manual. I later noticed many of my acquaintances who had fancy carousel or automated slide projectors. I realised early in life that my parents invested in educating their children rather than in fancy clothes. That broadened my viewpoint.
I remember a friend asking if he could buy a really old pair of jeans that I had worn to the point of it falling apart because the fashion was to wear what looked like worn-out jeans. I always bought the cheapest jeans and wore them as long as I could and he was offering me more than I had paid for them. I still cannot understand why someone pays for something that looks like it would not pass a Quality Control test because it has holes in it... That broadened my viewpoint.
In 1973 I spent a night in prison in Empangeni. My three companions and I were not guilty of any crime, but we were locked up in prison because we had no other place to stay for the night. Each of us was given a blanket similar to the one that I had had in the army the previous year, but the mattress was simply a thick layer of felt. That broadened my viewpoint.
I have often slept under the stars in various parts of the county, including one night that I was entirely on my own in the Namib dunes close to a dry river bed, and all that I could hear that night was the barking sound of some hyena and the singing in my ears. That broadened my viewpoint.
I have spent hours on Sundays or days off wandering on my own in the Namib Desert, savanna, Kalahari, Namaqualand, Succulent Karoo, Nama-Karoo, Fynbos, spekboomveld, grasslands, on beaches, and other open spaces all around our delightful South Africa, South West Africa/Namibia, Lesotho and Swaziland/Eswatini. I walked many kilometres on each of those days. All that I saw besides the wonderful vegetation, landscape, sky and the environment, were buck, ostrich, beetles, lizards, snakes, birds, of many species and animal life forms, and on rare occasions another human being. That broadened my viewpoint.
I slept on my own, on the ground, in a tent in Sperrgebiet. That broadened my viewpoint.
I have spent time alone with people of many race groups and nationalities, with just two of us, or groups of varying sizes, discussing life, eating, socialising, working, sleeping in the same room, bungalow, or tent. That broadened my viewpoint.
My already sympathetic feeling of respect and honour towards the LGBTQ community was enhanced when a gay colleague said, when accommodation was limited for a meeting, that he would not share a room with any other man because it would make him feel unfaithful to his partner. That broadened my viewpoint.
I remember in about 1983 when I was teaching at a Jewish school, and a Jewish colleague turned to me while a young male scholar was talking disparagingly about the informal settlements near the Cape Town airport, 'I wonder if he has been to Tel Aviv and seen the informal settlements there?' That broadened my viewpoint.
I have a child married 'across the colour bar' and I have a grandchild of 'mixed race'. That broadened my viewpoint.
I have been unemployed on at least four occasions. I had to hire myself out doing odd jobs and repairs. That broadened my viewpoint.
My wife has been permanently incapacitated and unable to work in her profession for nearly 20 years. That continues to broaden my viewpoint.
My wife and I were astonished to hear on the news that the aircraft Helderberg, a Boeing 747-200 Combi, 'experienced a catastrophic in-flight fire in the cargo area, broke up in mid-air, and crashed into the Indian Ocean east of Mauritius, killing all 159 people on board.' We had flown on that same aircraft in July 1981, about 7 months after its maiden flight, and while flying over the Atlantic Ocean at about 11pm I was aroused from my sleep by a strange noise. Looking out of the window I saw lights flashing past us and asked Sally if we had landed - to which she said that we had not. Damage had occurred in one engine and after landing we discovered that debris from that engine had been thrown into the neighbouring engine such that we flew for several hours and landed on Ilha Do Sal (Sal, Cape Verde) where we waited 24 hours for a replacement aircraft to take us on to New York. That broadened my viewpoint. And yet, I still fly on aircraft, old or new...
I am far from perfect - I acknowledge that. But I hope that I am becoming less and less prejudiced, and certainly not discriminatory, as my viewpoint becomes increasingly broadened and inclusive. I love our national mottos. When I was young we often quoted Ex Unitate Vires (transl. "from unity, strength", Eendracht maakt macht, or Unity is Strength), and in our present era, ! ke e: /xarra //ke, written in the Khoisan language of the /Xam people, literally meaning Diverse People Unite.
I feel it appropriate to share something that I shared in response to a video blaming all whites for causing all of the corruption in the ANC government or the EFF party: I am a cheeky ou, Colin. I ask myself - if Sterkfontein, Mapungubwe, Agulhas plain, and other notable sites in South Africa are sites of the cradle of humankind, and if I am descended from the first humankind, am I any less at home in the Fairest Cape than is someone with a darker skin and darker eyes? I reckon that I have just returned to my fatherland. If that is the case and I am as at home as anyone whose ancestors wandered away and then returned, then our skin colour is simply a sign of genetic variability and we are as equal as anyone can ever be. What is the problem of someone who blames 'whites' for anything that he does not want to accept as being his own fault? Somehow that sounds a bit like 'hate speech', prejudice, narrow-mindedness, or something like that, and more a part of the problem that part of the solution 🤔 But then, what do I know? 😉
I hope that anyone reading this will have his or her viewpoint broadened and seek to be inclusive and not exclusive, united and not divided, a builder and not a wrecker, part of the solution and not part of the problem. As imperfect as my efforts are in this regard, I continue to try. I hope that my mind, mental and emotional capability, and my brain and body, will enable me to always continue to try to be intentionally open-minded and inclusive as I advance in years.
I felt impressed add more thoughts that you might be interested in reading. See
'A promise of an eternal marriage for LGBTQ+ individuals - well, for anyone'.
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