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Bergie
Bergie is a term used for a subsection of homelessness, 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 Vagrancy (people), vagrants and waste picker, 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 language, 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. Bergie, an aw ...
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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. In 2022, the South African homeless population was reported by Statistics South Africa (Stats SA) to comprise a total of 55,719 individuals. One study found that three quarters of South African Metropolitan municipality (South Africa), 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 ...
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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 J. M. 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 & Tele ...
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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, 1988-9. Winner of the M-Net Book Prize, 1991. * ''Rainbow'', 1989 * ''Traveller'', 1989 * ''Merino'', 1989 * ''Serena's Story'', 1990 * ''Tjojo and the wild horses'', 1990 * ''Song of Be'', 1991 * ''Bau and the baobab tree'', 1992 * ''Mandi's wheels'', 1992 * ''The ...
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Cape Town Culture
A cape is a clothing accessory or a sleeveless outer garment of any length that hangs loosely and connects either at the neck or shoulders. They usually cover the back, shoulders, and arms. They come in a variety of styles and have been used throughout history for many different reasons.   Semantic distinction In fashion, the word "cape" usually refers to a shorter garment and "cloak" to a full-length version of the different types of garment, though the two terms are sometimes used synonymously for full-length coverings. A shoulder cape is thus sometimes called a "capelet". The fashion cape does not cover the front to any appreciable degree. In raingear, a cape is usually a long and roomy protective garment worn to keep one dry in the rain. History The first known usage of capes is unknown, but some early references we know of are from Ancient Roman military uniforms. Later on, capes were common in medieval Europe, especially when combined with a hood in the chaperon. They ...
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Homelessness
Homelessness, also known as houselessness or being unhoused or unsheltered, is the condition of lacking stable, safe, and functional housing. It includes living on the streets, moving between temporary accommodation with family or friends, living in boarding houses with no security of tenure, and people who leave their homes because of civil conflict and are refugees within their country. The legal status of homeless people varies from place to place. Homeless enumeration studies conducted by the government of the United States also include people who sleep in a public or private place that is not designed for use as a regular sleeping accommodation for human beings. Homelessness and poverty are interrelated. There is no standardized method for counting homeless individuals and identifying their needs; consequently, most cities only have estimated figures for their homeless populations. In 2025, approximately 330 million people worldwide experience absolute homelessness, lac ...
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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, ...
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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; 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 mentions possible derivations from " hoe-boy", meaning "farmhand", or a greeting "Ho, boy", but that he does not find these convincing. Bill Bryson suggests in '' Made in America'' (1998) that it might come from the railroad greeting, "Ho, beau!" or ...
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IMDb
IMDb, historically known as the Internet Movie Database, is an online database of information related to films, television series, podcasts, home videos, video games, and streaming content online – including cast, production crew and biographies, plot summaries, trivia, ratings, and fan and critical reviews. IMDb began as a fan-operated movie database on the Usenet group "rec.arts.movies" in 1990, and moved to the Web in 1993. Since 1998, it has been owned and operated by IMDb.com, Inc., a subsidiary of Amazon. The site's message boards were disabled in February 2017. , IMDb was the 51st most visited website on the Internet, as ranked by Semrush. the database contained some million titles (including television episodes), million person records, and 83 million registered users. Features User profile pages show a user's registration date and, optionally, their personal ratings of titles. Since 2015, "badges" can be added showing a count of contributions. These badges rang ...
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Black Comedy
Black comedy, also known as black humor, bleak comedy, dark comedy, dark humor, gallows humor or morbid 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, aiming to provoke 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. Black comedy differs from ribaldry#Blue comedy, blue comedy—which focuses more on topics such as nudity, Human sexual activity, sex, and body fluids—and from obscenity. Additionally, whereas the term ''black comedy'' is a relatively broad term covering humor relating to many serious subjects, ''gallows humor'' tends to be used more specifically in relation to death, or situations that are reminiscent of dying. Black humor can occasionally be related to the grotesque genre. Literary critics h ...
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English Language
English is a West Germanic language that developed in early medieval England and has since become a English as a lingua franca, global lingua franca. The namesake of the language is the Angles (tribe), Angles, one of the Germanic peoples that Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain, migrated to Britain after its End of Roman rule in Britain, Roman occupiers left. English is the list of languages by total number of speakers, most spoken language in the world, primarily due to the global influences of the former British Empire (succeeded by the Commonwealth of Nations) and the United States. English is the list of languages by number of native speakers, third-most spoken native language, after Mandarin Chinese and Spanish language, Spanish; it is also the most widely learned second language in the world, with more second-language speakers than native speakers. English is either the official language or one of the official languages in list of countries and territories where English ...
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