By John Scott
If you wish to urinate or defecate, you may do so in a public place if a toilet “is not reasonably available”.
This is one of the many liberal concessions made in the city council’s new bylaw relating to streets and public places. Yet for some reason, people are still staging protests against it because it allegedly victimises the homeless.
Were I a homeless person, I would hail it as the best thing since the Gettysburg Address.
There you are, in the middle of the city, resting after having done a good day’s begging, and the clock strikes 5pm, time for all the public toilets to be locked and bolted. Suddenly you have a bodily urge.
Before the adoption of the new bylaw you might have wondered what to do, besides crossing your legs and holding your breath. But now you can simply drop your pants, with the law on your side.
Or let’s say you are feeling dirty and badly in need of a personal clean-up. In terms of the bylaw, you may not bath or wash yourself in public, unless a bath or shower, once again, “is not reasonably available”, in which case you may. Even if a bath or shower is reasonably available but you don’t have the means to pay for it, feel free to strip down under the street hydrant, anyway.
This is revolutionary stuff, and there’s more. A person may not “appear in the nude or expose his or her genitalia”, except in “areas where nudity is permitted”.
It could happen that once a person has discovered where these areas are, they do not coincide with those areas where toilets and showers are not reasonably available.
In which case you may well have the right to expose whatever is necessary in the course of your public ablutions.
Unfortunately there are still paragraphs in the new law that don’t cover every exigency in the daily life of a homeless person. For instance, you may not start or keep a fire in a public place, when starting and keeping a fire in a public place is sometimes the only way to avoid freezing to death in winter.
And though you are permitted to sleep overnight in an informal settlement’s shelter, no mention is made of shop doorways, bridges or empty drainage pipes, which offer some protection from the elements if you can’t get to an informal settlement in time.
Perhaps the council would consider making these small amendments to the law.
Though very few homeless people own cars, it also seems churlish to|prohibit them from residing “in a motor vehicle for longer than 24 hours”, if they do in fact find permanent accommodation in one.
The law is strong on begging. It says no person shall beg from or closely follow a person “after the person has given a negative response to such begging”. But all homeless persons know that some persons weaken after a bit of pestering and do give something.
Maybe the law should be more specific about the negativity of the response. Beggars would know that no finally meant no if the beggee shouted the officially authorised words “voertsek jou bliksem”, which are respected by all, and legally understood. Cape Times
If you wish to urinate or defecate, you may do so in a public place if a toilet “is not reasonably available”.
This is one of the many liberal concessions made in the city council’s new bylaw relating to streets and public places. Yet for some reason, people are still staging protests against it because it allegedly victimises the homeless.
Were I a homeless person, I would hail it as the best thing since the Gettysburg Address.
There you are, in the middle of the city, resting after having done a good day’s begging, and the clock strikes 5pm, time for all the public toilets to be locked and bolted. Suddenly you have a bodily urge.
Before the adoption of the new bylaw you might have wondered what to do, besides crossing your legs and holding your breath. But now you can simply drop your pants, with the law on your side.
Or let’s say you are feeling dirty and badly in need of a personal clean-up. In terms of the bylaw, you may not bath or wash yourself in public, unless a bath or shower, once again, “is not reasonably available”, in which case you may. Even if a bath or shower is reasonably available but you don’t have the means to pay for it, feel free to strip down under the street hydrant, anyway.
This is revolutionary stuff, and there’s more. A person may not “appear in the nude or expose his or her genitalia”, except in “areas where nudity is permitted”.
It could happen that once a person has discovered where these areas are, they do not coincide with those areas where toilets and showers are not reasonably available.
In which case you may well have the right to expose whatever is necessary in the course of your public ablutions.
Unfortunately there are still paragraphs in the new law that don’t cover every exigency in the daily life of a homeless person. For instance, you may not start or keep a fire in a public place, when starting and keeping a fire in a public place is sometimes the only way to avoid freezing to death in winter.
And though you are permitted to sleep overnight in an informal settlement’s shelter, no mention is made of shop doorways, bridges or empty drainage pipes, which offer some protection from the elements if you can’t get to an informal settlement in time.
Perhaps the council would consider making these small amendments to the law.
Though very few homeless people own cars, it also seems churlish to|prohibit them from residing “in a motor vehicle for longer than 24 hours”, if they do in fact find permanent accommodation in one.
The law is strong on begging. It says no person shall beg from or closely follow a person “after the person has given a negative response to such begging”. But all homeless persons know that some persons weaken after a bit of pestering and do give something.
Maybe the law should be more specific about the negativity of the response. Beggars would know that no finally meant no if the beggee shouted the officially authorised words “voertsek jou bliksem”, which are respected by all, and legally understood. Cape Times
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