The tyres keep burning, but we are still waiting

Dear Mr President,

When I see the news about the G20 and COP30 meetings in Johannesburg, I think about how the ministers and officials drive around in big cars with shiny, brand-new tyres, talking about green jobs, waste management and the environment. They smile for the cameras, but I wish they would come to my community and see the truth. In many ways, the tyres that carried them to those events are the same tyres that are now piled in the fields around our homes. They are the same tyres that burn at night, filling our air with poisonous smoke.

We are sitting at home with nothing. Nothing, doing nothing.

Before everything stopped, I worked for Redisa, the Recycling and Economic Development Initiative of South Africa. They gave people like me a chance. I joined because I wanted to work and feed my children and grandchildren. We collected waste tyres from garages and dumps and took them to depots. The tyres were shredded, reused or correctly disposed of. It was hard work, but it was honest.

Most of us were women. Redisa hired a mix of people, even pensioners, because they knew they could still work. Redisa trained us, providing us with skills and hope as we all collected waste tyres together. They told us we can’t stay in shacks forever. They were helping us to change our lives.

Finally, I could buy food, pay for school uniforms, and stand proud, also knowing I was helping the environment.

Then everything stopped.

In 2017, the government shut down Redisa. They said there were problems, but the courts later found that this was not true, they just wanted the money for themselves. By then it was too late as we lost our jobs. The depots started to overflow and the tyres started piling up again.

The work was handed to the Waste Bureau under the Department of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment. We were told new contracts would come, but nothing happened.

In my area in Bushkoppies near Freedom Park, Soweto, there were 33 micro-collectors with full-time, meaningful work. Now there are only three who sometimes get contracts. We don’t know who else is getting the jobs now, we don’t even know if there are any more jobs as the tyres are hardly collected. The Waste Bureau doesn’t come and talk to us. They just leave us sitting here.

Local councillors just visit us when they want us to vote for them. After the voting days, you can’t see them anymore. Sadly, we, the waste tyre micro-collectors, are not the only ones looking for jobs, but it hurts because we used to be able to work for a system that was productive. I think that those with contracts now are politically connected.

Without a working waste tyre recycling system, the tyres are back in our streets and open fields. In 2018, a pile of dumped waste tyres caught fire near my house. We called the fire brigade and afterwards they made me pay for it because the tyres were near my house, but I had no money as I had lost my job the year before.

That is how people live now, breathing in the smoke of what used to be their jobs. Some neighbours burn waste tyres to make fires to keep warm in winter. The smell never leaves your clothes and children are always coughing at night. Even me, I think I get sick all the time from the stress of not working and the poor air quality.

South Africa has so many new waste tyres each year, probably close to 11 million, but currently less than 20% are recycled. When we worked as collectors, the number was more than three times higher. This is what happens when the government removes something that works and replaces it with something that doesn’t, like the current system under the waste bureau.

I learnt a lot about waste tyre recycling as a collector. It is not complicated and is one of the easiest waste streams to manage. It can create thousands of jobs again if the right system is put back in place. It already worked once. It didn’t cost the government a cent, but it helped people and cleaned the environment. Most importantly, it provided jobs to so many of us in my community who have dependants who relied on this income.

Now we are just sitting, waiting for this government to fix the waste tyre problem. While the ministers drive around in big cars, the tyres pile up.

The waste tyre micro-collectors are not asking for miracles, just a return to a system that kept things moving and created jobs. DM

Agnes Mbokwana is a former micro-collector from Johannesburg.