Ernest Cole: Heirs of Poverty

African children who have left home to fend for themselves in city streets.

Jumping fences is something he must do well if he means to live by his wits.

A township mother fights a losing battle to keep her son, aged, nine from running off to live life in the streets. She tries to assert her authority with threats like: “Whats your future going to be without education?” But its too late; the boy called Papa is out of control.

Papa with a slingshot, the usual first weapon of a township boy.

The line between playing and fighting, is very narrow for a boy schooled in the streets. He doesn’t care that he wears rags. When these pictures were taken, Papa’s mother had just learned that he had been playing hooky for three months.

Street boys angling for a way to eat, which they do only when they have money. 

“Penny, baas, please baas...” This nightly scene in the Golden City, as Black boys beg from Whites. They may be thrown a coin, or, as here, they may get slapped in the face.

Their hangout at the fringe of of a white city’s lights.

“We sleep anywhere,” a boy told me, “in drainpipes, junkyards, anywhere.” At dawn I found them lying in a park, shivering.

Tough talk and marijuana. These are tsotsis, youths who have turned to crime rather than work as White men’s garden boys or messengers – the usual jobs available to young Blacks.

Tsotsis are celebrating in a municipal drinking lounge with more to spend than an honest Black earns in a day’s work.