VENDA AND THOHOYANDOU HISTORY IN LIMPOPO PROVINCE

The Strollers is a Fiction genre.

The Strollers is story book by Lesley Beake. This book is aimed at showing/ describing the life of children who were living in the streets of Cape Town. According to Lesley these children were begging as a way of surviving day by day. The book has dramatically explained the lives of this children as they were trying to survive. The content of this book is based on real life situation and most people provided information and interviews were conducted with the strollers in Cape Town. Everything took place in Apartheid South Africa.

The book talks about Johnny as the main character, who left his home in Cape Flats trying to find a better life in the streets of Cape Town. Johnny find himself joining a group of strollers. The Strollers is name given to those children who begs in the street and the other name for it is street kids. According to Lesley Beake a stroller is someone who do not sleep by his house, eat by his house, as he eats by the bins. A stroller is someone who thinks he is free, as he does what his mind says.

Johnny and his group were bagging and raiding rubbish bins for survival. This was the results of poverty that was hanging over their house. In Johnny’s house there was eight children who were depending on the money that the mother was getting by doing small job of washing for a certain lady in Rondebosch. The struggle started when Johnny father died, and they must move from Transkei to the Cape. Then later the mother meets with Nelson who is the man of the house and at first things where better and different since Nelson was working and earning good money and he could even pay the rent for house. But later Nelson lost his job, since the factory shut down and gone into liquidation and then the struggle started.

Then later Johnny was bunking school and one day he came back home and find Ma and Nelson around then Nelson took a belt and bit Johnny for bunking school. This is other reason that made Johnny to leave home and became a stroller in the city of Cape Town. Johnny went to Cape Town looking for Abel and other strollers. The same day he did not have a place to sleep since he cannot go back home, so he tried every means, but nothing was working but later he found some bergies and left with them to their house that is made out boxes. Then finally Johnny find Abel and they continued living the life of strollers. The book continued telling the story of these boys as they flew from home in the cape flats to the streets of Cape Town.