8 August 2023
Sindiswa Godwana and volunteers of Usindiso Community Development are trying to improve conditions in Nyanga East by cleaning up rubbish. Photos: Vincent Lali
Dozens of jobless residents are cleaning up the worst informal dumps and rubbish eyesores in Nyanga East. Sindiswa Godwana says her organisation, Usindiso Community Development, organised the clean-up.
Godwana says they want to change the image of the township. She says they’d like to plant trees and want the City to establish parks where there are currently illegal dumps, to create spaces for children to play and for the elderly to exercise.
Volunteers clean up from 9am to 1pm on weekdays.
“We have only two rakes, which I got from a friend,” says Godwana.
Her friend also bought them 200 rubbish bags, but they are now running out.
“Sometimes we stop working simply because we have run out,” says Godwana.
They could also do with wheelbarrows to help move rubble and bulky rubbish.
Another friend gave her R1,000 to buy food for the volunteers.
Godwana says incomes could be created for people if the City created a large depot out of the biggest illegal dump where people could sort and collect recyclables.
Volunteer Zandi Mabija said they need safety boots and gloves, gumboots for the wet areas, jackets for the cold, and face masks for the smell.
“Our own takkies and shoes get damaged. Safety boots will protect our feet from broken bottles that we step on as we move around cleaning,” she said.
Thamsanqa Mafokeng said, “Residents just throw dirt anywhere because they have no place to dump it. We wish we could have a fenced site where residents could dump their rubbish and where the City collects it regularly.”
Currently they place the rubbish bags they’ve filled at the roadside for the City to collect. “Sometimes the City trucks just drive past,” he said.
It also happens the residents empty the bags and steal them. “It’s dispiriting to clean one minute and see the dirt you removed scattered around the next minute,” said Mafokeng.
Mayoral Committee Member for Urban Waste Management Grant Twigg said the City provides blue bags and moves the rubbish to landfills to support community clean-up initiatives, but this “can only be provided twice per year, and in no way should this be misconstrued as a promise of employment in the future”.
Twigg said placing bagged waste beside the road with no prior arrangement with the City is illegal dumping.
Volunteers clean up the filth dumped at incomplete RDP houses in Nyanga East