Opinion
Cape Town - When I met first met Danny Oosthuizen in April, I was very conscious of his first impression of me. I ended up saying something ridiculous to him about how I imagined he was taller.
The awkward moment was down to my eagerness to show Danny – a homeless man who would have a major impact through his writing on changing hearts and minds among Capetonians about the homeless – he was like everyone else in the Cape Argus newsroom.
My colleague Lance Witten had by then gathered 15 stories and chief photographer Henk Kruger had shot beautiful portraits for a three-week series on the homeless people of Cape Town, called The Dignity Project.
As then editor, I had given them strict instructions: I wanted authentic pieces putting the voices of the homeless people first and I didn’t want pictures of people scrounging through waste bins or sleeping rough.
The Dignity Project was conceived when I was invited by a good friend, Magadien Wentzel, to speak to a group of homeless people he was working with at a fresh produce garden in the CBD.
Their stories, and the pain etched on the faces, moved me.
Days before the launch, a few months later, I thought we had a great editorial project. But Danny, 47, would make The Dignity Project excellent.
Lance had met Danny on the street and instinctively knew here was someone special. Danny agreed to write a daily column for three weeks as the anchor piece to accompany the profiles.
But after first reading his pieces I knew we had the magical ingredient to make The Dignity Project fly.
Newsrooms are tough places. When I first broached the idea of the series, I couldn’t help feeling eyes rolling over. The “done to death” remark that condemns issues like the homeless to the spiked stories pile would not be far away.
But Danny would change that with a powerful introductory piece that the Cape Argus ran as the front page lead to launch The Dignity Project with the headline: “I’m just like you but I’m homeless”.
“We have libraries where you can have 30 minutes of free wi-fi at a time, so I had to go from the central library to the one in the Gardens. That’s how I wrote the first few columns.
“For the front page piece I wanted Capetonians to know that most of the time we were people who were fully functional, just as they were.
“People are living in a rat race. They have accounts to pay, school fees, children all these types of responsibilities. If you fall through the cracks, it happens that people overlook you. That was the frustrating part of it because I tried to tell someone, ‘Are you listening? Can you hear me?’
“I lot of people struggle their whole lives and they lose things and it’s like there is no second chance for them because society just doesn’t have the time.
“By making the people of Cape Town aware of what happens for example, people were astounded by what I had to say about sanitary pads. If a woman has a problem with her menstrual cycle and she feels sick she can stay at home. Homeless people don’t have that luxury.”
But I had an ulterior motive. I insisted that Danny would work in our newsroom, side-by-side with the Argus journos and sit in on our news conference. He was well-read and made telling contributions to the conferences.
To present a sincere collection of stories about the homeless, we had to strip away our own prejudices. We needed to experience Danny’s daily reality; that he was HIV positive and homeless too, and how a minor thing like taking a shower was a major thing in his world.
The Dignity Project was a resounding success and after the three-week project, the response to Danny’s columns was so unprecedented he wrote himself into a full-time weekly columnist job at the Cape Argus.
The secret to his success is his honesty.
“I speak my heart. You can’t go out there and create awareness for a plight if you are not honest. I could’ve not told people about my (HIV) status, I could’ve not told them about the drug problem that I had. There are lots of things I could not have told them but I decided that I’m not the only one in this world who has these issues.”
Danny was orphaned at 12 when his father died. His mother died when he was 9. When he was 11 he was sexually abused, although he didn’t realise it at the time.
Then he was diagnosed HIV positive a few years ago. It was a mix that would see him on the streets many years later after managing to live a regular life with a job and a place to stay.
“When I was diagnosed HIV positive, in my head and in my heart I died. I took my medication and after a month my viral load was undetectable and my CD4 count doubled.
“But I still have this stigma that I placed on myself. Now you can’t have a relationship because you have to disclose or worry about being around children when you cut yourself there’s so many things you have to be careful of. I actually became this virus. I was on vitamins and eating healthy.
“Then I started to get into contact with people that are also HIV positive. I started to talk about it and the more I talked about it, the more I realised there is something coming out of this. I really feel like I wanted to have the time to heal myself. I was always busy with other people’s issues.”
Since landing his weekly column, Danny is looking forward. He is educating himself and recently completed an introduction to journalism short course online while based in the Cape Argus newsroom.
Danny also started doing online campaigns and his latest is lobbying to make sanitary pads VAT-free and more affordable.
At the height of The Dignity Project, a woman who read Danny’s column was so moved she gave him a ticket to the Mariah Carey concert.
He is often invited to social responsibility events by corporates too. He once wrote about the toiletries of a hotel that came in a care pack to the homeless, and was invited to spend a weekend at the Table Bay Hotel to “try out their toiletries”.
Later he played wedding planner for a homeless couple on the street. Charly’s Bakery and Pick * Pay supplied food and cake. A car dealership came to the party to sponsor a convertible BMW to take the couple around on their wedding day.
“I’m not stupid. I speak German and French and I have a matric qualification. I have people skills. But it’s like this is a journey I had to be on. On the Friday, I was Danny the homeless person. On the Monday, when my story and face was on the front page of the newspaper, I became Danny the Argus boy.
“But I was still the same Danny. People came up to me and they said, ‘Wow, you’re such a good writer’. But the way I see myself is very negative. I have this constant conflict. But I’ve learnt to relax a bit more and accept when people give me a compliment.
“When you walk into a place like this you know, this building is very intimidating. You see a big staircase and marble and a portrait of Madiba on the wall. I thought, ‘Oh my, you don’t look like these people, you don’t smell like these people.’
“Then I meet the editor who tells me he thought I was taller. I ran to the church across the road. I sat there and thought what am I going to do now? I came back and I felt uncomfortable because I was intimidated by these people who had years of experience and are qualified and have written stories that have made major headlines. Here I come from the streets and write my diaries and tell the world who is who in the zoo.
“But they actually embraced me. The fact that my stuff wasn’t really changed made me even more paranoid.
“On the Monday morning that my picture was on the front page the security guard here looked at me and said, ‘You’re in trouble. Your face is in the newspaper.’
“It was okay until I walked to the coffee shop in Spin Street and a woman saw me with a paper in her hand and she goes, ‘Ah, you’re the guy from the newspaper.’ That started to worry me a bit.
“The homeless people started to joke that they didn’t want to do things around me because it would end up in the newspaper. To be honest, I never had anyone come up to me to say something bad about my writing. Everybody knows about it and everybody is comfortable with it.
“I wouldn’t really say I represent homeless people because others have been on the street much longer than I have. But I try and cover all the aspects I can. The Dignity Project for me was never about fighting, it was about awareness.
“The public was awesome. People started to realise that a person who is walking around aimlessly and acting crazy, is actually a medical case that needs help. If you don’t have facilities, like showers or a place to wash your clothes, you are not going to look or be presentable.
“We take things for granted. I had a shower this morning so I assume you had one too. I mean we live in South Africa. Why shouldn’t we have these facilities?”
Danny has no intention of letting up. He continues to use the platform of his column to better the lives of others. After another long stint of living on the street recently, he will soon move into a room of his own and hopes he can adopt a pet.
“I have met a lot of good people. People who want to make a difference but just don’t have the time. People have their boxes and sometimes they want to step out of the box and think out of the box, but because of the limitations they have, they can’t really move as freely as they want.
“We get along really well at the moment with the CCID. I used to despise the CCID. I then sent them an e-mail and asked them if they’d mind if I spent one day with their field workers. I did and wrote about it and realised they actually work hard. There are some homeless people we can also be spiteful, deliberate, aggravating and irritating. It comes from both sides.
“With The Dignity Project next year, hopefully we will see corporates taking on the loads of skills on the streets. People are hungry for work. Businesses have to pull these people in. If you can supply someone with a job that’s sustainable, it helps a lot.
“We don’t want handouts. Nobody wants a handout. A Christmas present or a birthday present is awesome, but you don’t want to stand with your hand out. It’s frustrating. You want to do it for yourself.
“I want to continue being an activist. I have a great passion for elderly people and I feel that not enough effort is made for people who are homeless or people in wheelchairs. I find that absolutely unacceptable.
“These people have been through the Struggle and they’ve been through a hell of a lot of things in their lives. To now just be written off by government, society and everyone else is just evil.”