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Bergie
Bergie is a term used for a subsection of homeless people in Cape Town, South Africa. The word originates from the Afrikaans ''berg'' meaning "mountain" – the term originally referred to the homeless people who sheltered in the forests of the slopes of Table Mountain. The synonymous term stroller typically refers to street children living a bergie lifestyle. They are vagrants and scavengers, sometimes begging, performing odd jobs or working as informal car guards for tips. Most of them are Cape Coloureds who speak Afrikaans mixed with a few English terms, and are known for their sense of humour, vulgar language and alcohol consumption. Their lifestyle is portrayed in the 1987 novel ''The Strollers'' by Lesley Beake, the 1998 documentary film ''Pavement Aristocrats: The Bergies of Cape Town'' by François Verster, and the play ''Suip!'', a black comedy co-written and directed by Heinrich Reisenhofer. See also * Homelessness in South Africa * Hobo * Tramp A tramp is a long-t ...
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Homelessness
Homelessness or houselessness – also known as a state of being unhoused or unsheltered – is the condition of lacking stable, safe, and adequate housing. People can be categorized as homeless if they are: * living on the streets, also known as rough sleeping (primary homelessness); * moving between temporary shelters, including houses of friends, family, and emergency accommodation (secondary homelessness); and * living in private boarding houses without a private bathroom or security of tenure (tertiary homelessness). * have no permanent house or place to live safely * Internally Displaced Persons, persons compelled to leave their places of domicile, who remain as refugees within their country's borders. The rights of people experiencing homelessness also varies from country to country. United States government homeless enumeration studies also include people who sleep in a public or private place, which is not designed for use as a regular sleeping accommodation for hu ...
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Homelessness
Homelessness or houselessness – also known as a state of being unhoused or unsheltered – is the condition of lacking stable, safe, and adequate housing. People can be categorized as homeless if they are: * living on the streets, also known as rough sleeping (primary homelessness); * moving between temporary shelters, including houses of friends, family, and emergency accommodation (secondary homelessness); and * living in private boarding houses without a private bathroom or security of tenure (tertiary homelessness). * have no permanent house or place to live safely * Internally Displaced Persons, persons compelled to leave their places of domicile, who remain as refugees within their country's borders. The rights of people experiencing homelessness also varies from country to country. United States government homeless enumeration studies also include people who sleep in a public or private place, which is not designed for use as a regular sleeping accommodation for hu ...
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Homelessness In South Africa
Homelessness in South Africa dates back to the apartheid period. Increasing unemployment, lack of affordable housing, social disintegration, and social and economic policies have all been identified as contributing factors to the issue. Some scholars argue that solutions to homelessness in South Africa lie more within the private sphere than in the legal and political spheres. There is no national census on homeless people in South Africa, researchers instead rely on individual studies of homeless persons in particular cities. The South African homeless population has been estimated at approximately 200,000. One study found that three out of four South African metropolitan municipalities viewed homelessness primarily as a social dependency issue, responding with social interventions. At the same time, homeless South Africans indicated that the most important thing the municipality could assist them with was employment and well-located affordable housing. History Early histor ...
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François Verster
François Verster (born 1969) is an independent South African film director and documentary maker. He has a wide background in writing, music, academia and film. After completing an MA degree with distinction under literature Nobel Prize laureate JM Coetzee at the University of Cape Town, he worked with Barenholtz Productions in New York and as crew member on various independent features. Verster's acclaimed debut as documentary director/producer was ''Pavement Aristocrats: The Bergies of Cape Town''. He takes an observational approach to social issues in his films, which have won local and international awards. Verster has taught documentary directing and film studies, and was the lecturer of the film component of the Communicating the Humanities project, Centre for Humanities Research at the University of the Western Cape. His films are used in seminars on the intersection between creative documentary and social activism. In 1998, Verster formed Undercurrent Film & Televis ...
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Stellenbosch Bergie 2
Stellenbosch (; )A Universal Pronouncing Gazetteer.
Thomas Baldwin, 1852. Philadelphia: Lippincott, Grambo & Co.
A Grammar of Afrikaans.
Bruce C. Donaldson. 1993. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.
is a town in the province of , situated about east of

Lesley Beake
Lesley Beake (born 1949) is a Scottish-born South African children's author. Life Lesley Beake was born and went to school in Edinburgh, Scotland. She lives in South Africa, where she has worked as a teacher. Her children's novels, "which address the plight of children of certain tribes in southern Africa, attract an adult audience".Sandra L. Beckett, ''Crossover Fiction: Global and Historical Perspectives'', Taylor & Francis, 2009, p.128 Works * ''Detained at Her Majesty's pleasure: the journal of Peter David Hadden'', 1986 * ''The Strollers'', 1987. Winner of the Percy FitzPatrick Award, 1986-1988, Winner of the Young African Award, 1987-1988 * ''A Cageful of Butterflies'', 1989. Winner of the Percy FitzPatrick Award The Percy FitzPatrick Award, in recognition of author Sir Percy Fitzpatrick, was initiated in 1970 for the best South African children's book in English. Initiated in 1970 by the South African Library Association (SALA), initially only books writte ..., 1988-9. Wi ...
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Cape Town Culture
A cape is a clothing accessory or a sleeveless outer garment which drapes the wearer's back, arms, and chest, and connects at the neck. History Capes were common in medieval Europe, especially when combined with a hood in the chaperon. They have had periodic returns to fashion - for example, in nineteenth-century Europe. Roman Catholic clergy wear a type of cape known as a ferraiolo, which is worn for formal events outside a ritualistic context. The cope is a liturgical vestment in the form of a cape. Capes are often highly decorated with elaborate embroidery. Capes remain in regular use as rainwear in various military units and police forces, in France for example. A gas cape was a voluminous military garment designed to give rain protection to someone wearing the bulky gas masks used in twentieth-century wars. Rich noblemen and elite warriors of the Aztec Empire would wear a tilmàtli; a Mesoamerican cloak/cape used as a symbol of their upper status. Cloth and clothing wa ...
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Tramp
A tramp is a long-term homeless person who travels from place to place as a vagrant, traditionally walking all year round. Etymology Tramp is derived from a Middle English verb meaning to "walk with heavy footsteps" (''cf.'' modern English ''trample'') and "to go hiking". In Britain the term was widely used to refer to vagrants in the early Victorian period. The social reporter Henry Mayhew refers to it in his writings of the 1840s and 1850s. By 1850 the word was well established. In that year Mayhew described "the different kinds of vagrants or tramps" to be found in Britain, along with the "different trampers' houses in London or the country". He distinguished several types of tramps, ranging from young people fleeing from abusive families, through to people who made their living as wandering beggars and prostitutes. In the United States, the word became frequently used during the American Civil War, to describe the widely shared experience of undertaking long marches, ofte ...
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Hobo
A hobo is a migrant worker in the United States. Hoboes, tramps and bums are generally regarded as related, but distinct: a hobo travels and is willing to work; a tramp travels, but avoids work if possible; and a bum neither travels nor works. Etymology The origin of the term is unknown. According to etymologist Anatoly Liberman, the only certain detail about its origin is the word was first noticed in American English circa 1890. The term has also been dated to 1889 in the Western—probably Northwestern—United States, and to 1888. Liberman points out that many folk etymologies fail to answer the question: "Why did the word become widely known in California (just there) by the early Nineties (just then)?" Author Todd DePastino notes that some have said that it derives from the term "hoe-boy", coming from the hoe they are using and meaning "farmhand", or a greeting such as "Ho, boy", but that he does not find these to be convincing explanations. Bill Bryson suggests in '' Mad ...
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Black Comedy
Black comedy, also known as dark comedy, morbid humor, or gallows humor, is a style of comedy that makes light of subject matter that is generally considered taboo, particularly subjects that are normally considered serious or painful to discuss. Writers and comedians often use it as a tool for exploring vulgar issues by provoking discomfort, serious thought, and amusement for their audience. Thus, in fiction, for example, the term ''black comedy'' can also refer to a genre in which dark humor is a core component. Popular themes of the genre include death, crime, poverty, suicide, war, violence, terrorism, discrimination, disease, racism, sexism, and human sexuality. Black comedy differs from both blue comedy—which focuses more on crude topics such as nudity, sex, and Body fluids—and from straightforward obscenity. Whereas the term ''black comedy'' is a relatively broad term covering humor relating to many serious subjects, ''gallows humor'' tends to be used more specifical ...
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Cape Coloureds
Cape Coloureds () are a South African ethnic group consisted primarily of persons of mixed race and Khoisan descent. Although Coloureds form a minority group within South Africa, they are the predominant population group in the Western Cape. They are generally bilingual, speaking Afrikaans and English, though some speak only one of these. Some Cape Coloureds may code switch, speaking a patois of Afrikaans and English called also known as Cape Slang (Capy) or , meaning Kitchen Afrikaans. Cape Coloureds were classified under apartheid as a subset of the larger Coloured race group. At least one genetic study indicates that Cape Coloureds have an ancestry consisting of the following ethnic groups: * Khoisan: (32–43%) * Bantu-speaking Africans: (20–36%) * Ethnic groups in Europe: (21–28%) * Asian peoples: (9–11%) Origin and history The Cape Coloureds are a heterogeneous South African ethnic group, with diverse ancestral links. Ancestry may include European settlers, i ...
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English Language
English is a West Germanic language of the Indo-European language family, with its earliest forms spoken by the inhabitants of early medieval England. It is named after the Angles, one of the ancient Germanic peoples that migrated to the island of Great Britain. Existing on a dialect continuum with Scots, and then closest related to the Low Saxon and Frisian languages, English is genealogically West Germanic. However, its vocabulary is also distinctively influenced by dialects of France (about 29% of Modern English words) and Latin (also about 29%), plus some grammar and a small amount of core vocabulary influenced by Old Norse (a North Germanic language). Speakers of English are called Anglophones. The earliest forms of English, collectively known as Old English, evolved from a group of West Germanic (Ingvaeonic) dialects brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlers in the 5th century and further mutated by Norse-speaking Viking settlers starting in the 8th and 9th ...
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