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Sobriety rule enables a better life for homeless at Cape Town’s Safe Spaces

18 Dec 2024

It is hard to believe that we need to set out the reasons that the sobriety rule is required at the City of Cape Town’s Safe Spaces which, far from the picture left-wing activists like to paint, are first and foremost places of care.

My late dad, Allen, was fond of saying that “common sense isn’t very common at all”. His words sprung to mind reading Jonty Cogger of Ndifuna Ukwazi argue that the City should relax the “punitive” rule requiring homeless residents in our Safe Spaces to abstain from drugs and alcohol while on the premises (Daily Maverick, “Time to rethink the punitive approach of Cape Town’s Safe Spaces”, 17 December 2024).

This relates to a case currently before the court in which Ndifuna Ukwazi has intervened again to try to stop the City from relocating homeless people off the streets (in the vicinity of Hope and Buitenkant streets in Gardens) into a Safe Space, because they will not be able to use drugs once they are moved.

In cases like this it is abundantly clear to me that left-wing activists in Cape Town are so concerned with appearing to be “progressive” that they’ve completely lost sight of how to actually make progress.

In fact, they achieve the opposite of progress. Their actions are very directly prolonging the suffering and indignity of those living on the street, when a much better alternative is available. And even worse than that, their actions are now actively prolonging harmful and even deadly addiction, when treatment is available. This is not progressive at all. It’s abusive and cruel.

Ndifuna is actually crushing the people they claim to want to help. They cannot hide the gulf between their stated intentions and the outcomes of their actions.

It is hard to believe that we need to set out the reasons that the sobriety rule is required, especially when Dr Cogger’s piece makes no real argument, relying rather on more progressive sounding non-sequiturs and cliché (“we must shift from punishment to partnership”, and so on). But for the record, in no particular order:

There are many residents in our Safe Spaces who are actively receiving treatment for their addictions and are trying to change their lives for the better. It would be terrible for their own personal journey of recovery to be constantly exposed again to people using around them;

People under the influence of drugs or alcohol often display violent and aggressive behaviour. They may not mean to do so, they may simply be completely “out of it”. But it would place other residents of our Safe Spaces at an unacceptable risk to their own personal safety to allow people to use drugs or alcohol around them;

Many people living on the streets suffer from either diagnosed or undiagnosed mental health conditions, and in conjunction with drugs or alcohol, this often manifests in psychosis. This is not conducive to the facility being safe or caring. (As an aside, Cogger and others could make a genuinely positive contribution by probing why there are not adequate state psychiatric facilities to treat the many homeless residents who desperately need psychiatric care.); and

The use of narcotics is against the law. It would be absurd to allow open lawbreaking in a state-run facility, and no court could possibly order us to do so without effectively decriminalising narcotics.

Keep in mind that many people are homeless because of their addictions – their families have taken the impossibly difficult and heartrending decision to expel their own sons, daughters, sisters or brothers because their addictions are leading to domestic abuse, theft of all valuables in the home, or worse. I often speak with homeless people in Cape Town who are desperate to return to their families, but who are forbidden from doing so. In fact, our social workers are trained to attempt to reunite these families, and often succeed, but usually only on condition that the person moving back home commits to sobriety and treatment.

I recently met a 19-year-old homeless lady near the Grand Parade. As I often do, I asked her how she came to be living on the streets. She told a familiar story: her family in Belhar had thrown her out when she started stealing furniture from the home to sell for drug money. I asked if one of our social workers could contact her parents, and she said yes. That story had a good ending – her parents were willing to take her back, and she’s been home now for several weeks.

I truly hope she stays clean and stays home. Sadly, many don’t. Beating addiction would be much harder for those living at our Safe Spaces if they were constantly surrounded by drug use, like they were when living on the street. What our Safe Spaces do offer is access to a range of social services including the City’s Matrix substance abuse treatment programme, which has an 83% success rate for clients.

Far from the picture Ndifuna and Cogger like to paint, the City of Cape Town’s Safe Spaces are quite remarkable. They are first and foremost places of care. They offer professional referral to addiction treatment centres, access to a team of social workers who are always on-site, access to medical treatment, personal training and development programmes, help preparing for job interviews, and other basics like help getting an ID book or a social grant. This is all over and above the basic dignity of a warm bed, showers, toilets and two hot meals. This is an unprecedented level of care and is not replicated even remotely anywhere else in South Africa.

And most importantly, we are achieving results. We are restoring public spaces all around the city, moving homeless people off of the streets, and offering them the care and shelter they need to reintegrate and rebuild their lives. Our Safe Space programme, along with a few other truly wonderful homeless shelter providers (such as MES, Haven, Streetscapes and U-Turn), is making these results possible.

Ndifuna would do well to introspect about their own role in actually making life worse for the homeless, and acknowledge when progress is actually being made.

We will not be changing the sobriety rule. DM

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