By David Gemmell
Johannesburg - Rest in Peace, the Hunchback of Bompas Road.
Yesterday I received an email from a Jackie Saks to inform me of the death of Zoroao, the hunchback beggar who worked the Bompas Road traffic.
The reason she was informing me, was in September 2017, I had done an article for the Saturday Star on the little chap. Zoroao’s story was part of the newspaper’s “Street People” series.
Jackie and a Facebook Group called Joburg Jewish Mommies are trying to raise money to repatriate his body to Mozambique, so his family can give him a proper burial. She thought I might be able to assist with the fund-raising.
Over the years I have often seen and chatted to Zoroao. He was always cheerful and seemed happy to see me, while never trying to get any money from me. My abiding memory of him was of a happy person with a ready smile. Which, when you delve into his past and find out how he came to be a hunchback – he wasn’t born one – it is remarkable he never carried a grudge against the people who caused him to break his back, or the doctor who later ruined his operation by moving him too soon.
In 2017, I asked him: “Are you angry with the people who did this to you?”
“No. I will never be cross. It is the way God put me, so I’m going to be like this,” he replied.
If only we could all be this magnanimous. He was happily married to Portia and had a daughter Danielle, “…my little girl, she is powerful in Portuguese and English. She too clever,” he smiled proudly. A typical daddy.
On the Monday after the article had come out, I went to deliver a copy of the Saturday Star to Zoroao. I did this as a matter of course with all my interviews, as I didn’t expect the street people I was interviewing to buy a copy.
I parked opposite the traffic lights where he was working and waited. He was moving languidly from car to car. Chatting to some of the drivers and getting ignored by others, when suddenly he saw me standing alongside my car.
He immediately darted across the road and began scuttling towards me. He had an unusual, uneven gait as he speeded up. Eventually he was hurtling flat out straight at me. He was just yards away when he launched himself. He landed with his arms, legs and hump completely engulfing me. To say I was completely flummoxed as I clutched at his tiny little deformed body to prevent him falling, is an understatement.
“Whoa…” I said. “What’s wrong, what are you doing?” He grinned broadly and said, “You too good. Too good.”
I asked him to get in my car, as by now I was making a spectacle of myself. Not sure what people in the traffic thought when they saw me hugging this little misshapen fellow, who a minute before had been quietly begging.
As I got in, he couldn’t wait to tell me, the first driver that morning he approached said, “I read about you”, then gave him R400 – the largest single amount he had ever been given.
I was thrilled at his news, but still a bit self-conscious about his antics a moment earlier.
I am terribly sad to hear of his death. If anyone can help the Jewish Mommies help Portia and Daniele to get Zoroao home – the cost is R20 000, of which the Jewish Mommies have raised R14 000 – it will hopefully give them some closure.
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