It started, as so many of these things happen, by fortune and the fact that the absence of a car exposed me better to the street life in Johannesburg compared to many others. The area where I was living, and am now living again, is a middle class area, located nearby a main street (called, without inspiration, Main Street), which hosts two shopping areas, a string of bars, a McDonalds and a KFC. It's an important thorough fare, and is also an assembly point and hang-out place, especially during the weekends. That makes it the ideal space for street kids to score their buck and other stuff. A large group of these children derives from the more poorly developed Sophiatown neighbourhood, a few kilometres further west. Most kids walk back and forth every day and they have seemingly established a highly competitive - and sometimes aggressive - rotation system for favourite junctions.

One particular place is the exits of the MacDonalds and the KFC across the street. Another at the junction nearby a major shopping area which I pass on a daily basis to get my minibus-taxis. During winter last year, children would drift a little further and assemble at the corners of 7th street in Melville - an aorta of bars, restaurants, hostels and other assorted shops, a backpacker and student mecca.

Passing these nodes frequently last year - either when I'd been walking, or when I'd been making use of the public transport - I soon was familiarized with some of the faces of the streets kids that asked me for money.

Shain was one of the more haunting ones. When I shook his hand, the second thing that struck me was how callous it was. The first thing that had struck me was the misty blue of his left eye - blind. He had never finished matric (secondary education) but he seemed to know exactly what he wanted: back to school and finish his education in making furniture. He said he enjoyed using his hands to create. I asked him what had made him drop out, why he was standing in front of the MacDonalds asking money of strangers. A confused story followed - the man his mother was dating had gone away and put them on the street. The money for his schooling got eroded away for food and housing, his mother had no job. Shain, some 15 years now, was the oldest man - and in Africa that makes him important; it makes him the head of the family and responsible for income.

Then there was Thomas. Unkempt, with a dirty hat on greasy hair, he'd hang out at the main junction at Main Street. He doesn't really know his age - he's about ten, the other kids think. Despite his appearance of docility, one day I watched from a distance how he chased off a competitor (a white guy) by threatening to throw a brick while shouting vile insults. That streak of aggression was rather revealing; I'd not confront it with him later on.

My principal philosophy to which I strictly adhere to this day is simple: I do not give money, period. Thomas was inventive enough to catch on - the money he needed was for food, so couldn't I give food instead? For a while I made sure to bring a piece of fruit every day, or some bread on another day. At the end of last year, things had gone dire enough he braved to ask if, instead of one piece per day, I could do bulk shopping instead. I had a university car that day, so we bought basic food stuff in the supermarket, a total of some 90 Rand (then about 9 Euros), and I dropped him and another kid at the place where he lived: a dilapidated multi-floored brick hostel, a flock of children on bare feet playing in front. After another month, in December, he'd ask again.

But it nagged. It wasn't sustainable what I was doing. Those kids didn't get education. They were not working for a future - they were clinging on, surviving.

So my first attempt was to look for people who did outreach, similar to whataboutbob described with his Tanzanian 50% campaign. First the Internet. But there was very little to be found for Johannesburg which could immediately be slotted with my aims. I've cut out all the links, and the contacts I've found so far, it doesn't make much of a great story. The best initiative I found was Twilight Children, whose goals have been outlined here:

Twilight Children

To initially make contact with the street children of Johannesburg through the Outreach Programme and to provide them with a shelter and a place of refuge. Thereafter to encourage their participation in the Twilight Children Programme which has been established in Hillbrow, Johannesburg since 1983.

To determine the boy's family circumstances and to encourage him to return to the care of family or guardian where possible and to provide counseling to such family or guardian if necessary.

But Twilight Children operate in Hillbrow - and although this is an area where a project of such scope is indeed direly needed, the Melville and Sophiatown areas are literally kilometres away from Hillbrow and inaccessible for street kids living in Sophiatown. Johannesburg needs more of these nodes.

I visited a shelter for street children in a nearby area, set up by Father Laslo Karpati, who began the Yithubalami project - but now race became an issue. Yithubalami refuses to shelter children who are perceived as Coloureds. Now Coloureds was a linguistic headache, a juridical farce under apartheid, despite the multitude of farces in that time. A collective basket of anyone who'd not be immediately classifiable as Asian, White or Black - the Coloureds represented all kinds of intermingling cultures, from Lebanese to the Malaysian influx to the descendants of cultural mixing. Under apartheid, the divisionary line who'd be considered "more black" could run straight through families.

As it appears to me, Coloureds voted in 1994 overwhelmingly for the National Party - the party that had always oppressed them - while shunning the ANC. Although I only have anecdotal observations, this has aggravated a "racial" division still existing today. As an ethnic(?) group they are now caught between a rock and a hard place.  

Although I fully support the Yithubalami initiative, I got queasy with the apparent ethnic division - although I never spoke with Karpati personally, I was told "Coloureds" were no longer welcome after several "incidents" - from what I could read between the lines, this meant occasions of theft and fighting. Anyway, I also get very queasy when religion is so blatantly printed on their badges of honour - something that is beginning to frustrate me here to no end. Rich African people are mind-numbingly oblivious for the most abject poverty living cheek to cheek in their world, or when they are there standing on the breach, 9.5 out of 10 is absorbed in Christian do-goodiness.

Still, it was about finding the right people while the clock was ticking. It's too late now.

I left in December for the Netherlands, still building out my plans - trying to get free out-of-shelf date food from the supermarkets, incorporate the political representative of the area, finding new projects already active nearby. I had given Thomas a final stash of foodware, had organised some clothing, given my old pair of shoes to Shaun - but already he was telling me that with increasing food prices his family's situation was getting increasingly dire. I said I could only help him again in the next year and told him to hold on. I remember him biting his lip and saying, "Yes boss" (which I detest).

When I came back living here, early March, I found everything in shambles. I met a new guy, Ricardo, 26 years old but looking 35, HIV positive (and Coloured), who seemed now in control of the junction at Main Street. I asked about Shain, Thomas, Lucky, the others. Jail. All of them. Shain had attempted breaking and entering shortly after I left in December and had been dragged off by the police. With one of the more stabilising factors gone, the network of which Shain had been part had collapsed - all of them had begun stealing, and had been caught. Perhaps even purposefully - because one is at least guaranteed of food in jail. But I knew I had lost them. Even worse was to come: I learned that in January a restaurant owner in Melville's 7th street was arrested on charges of sexually molesting children, street children. I felt my heart rip: it was the corner where, among others, Thomas would frequently hang out.

I tried to pick up some new things with Ricardo - because there are always more people on the street, always others who flock in. As long as they want to work, as long as they express they want to get out, I'm willing to see what can be done. I tried with Ricardo, who wept openly when one day I brought back 50 Rand of foodware from the supermarket, but my attempts had become half-heartedly. I feared Ricardo would be too old, he's been on the street since he was 12. He carries the marks of street fighting, his front teeth are missing.

The final straw was two weekends ago, a long holiday weekend in SA. I came back from the laundrette and passed the corner that is now Ricardo's hangout.

He was sprawled half over the pavement, half over the street, lost in a stupor of alcohol. The next day, I learned he'd been arrested for public drunkenness.