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Premier Zille’s childhood toilets not comparable to informal settlements

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Axolile Notywala is a social justice activist in the Western Cape and the former general secretary of the Social Justice Coalition (SJC). He is now the Western Cape convenor of Rise Mzansi.

Helen Zille’s Twitter response on the daily sanitary hell in which people in informal settlements are forced to live was insulting and showed a lack of understanding.

First published by GroundUp

In informal settlements, using a toilet can be one of the most dangerous activities one has to perform daily. Yet instead of fixing these problems, Helen Zille chose to defend her earlier comments.

I am not disputing that she had a hard childhood but it is incomparable to what people living in informal settlements endure; she shows a lack of understanding of how millions of black people in South Africa live.

Western Cape Premier Helen Zille defended on Twitter this past week what she said in 2014 to Khayelitsha residents on cleaning informal settlement toilets.

Zille’s defence came after eNCA’s Checkpoint exposed the daily indignities imposed on black people living in South Africa’s informal settlements. The episode was titled Sanitary Hell, and it focused on the provision of portable toilets in Johannesburg’s informal settlements.

In the episode, City of Johannesburg Mayco Member Nico de Jager said that it’s the responsibility of the people using the toilets to clean them. Journalist Nkepile Mabuse asked him whether he cleans the toilet he uses in the government building, to which he replied no. Then Mabuse asked why he expects the people of Zamimpilo informal settlement in Kliptown to clean public toilets. De Jager couldn’t answer him.

I retweeted this segment of the interview, saying that in 2014 Zille said the same thing about Khayelitsha informal settlement residents. Zille replied to my tweet: “I was taught to leave a toilet (public or private) in the condition I would like to find it. Many others I know do the same thing.” She went on to say, “I have utilised almost every kind of toilet from long drop to waterless. We had bucket toilets at primary school. Same etiquette applies.”

You would think that having served as both Mayor of Cape Town and Premier of the Western Cape Zille would have greater awareness of the living conditions in informal settlements.

A few things about these toilets that Zille and De Jager expect informal settlement residents to clean. (1) They are meant to be temporary. (2) They are used over long periods of time, up to 10 years in many cases. (3) These are chemical and container toilets that can be shared by more than 15 families in some communities.

Many people living in South Africa’s informal settlements still lack access to adequate sanitation services, such as functioning flush toilets. In Cape Town, we know of the infamous porta-potties, also known as portable flush toilets, that are provided to informal settlement residents. This is an undignified and unhygienic form of a bucket toilet. And there’s the free-standing Mshengu toilets.

In informal settlements, using a toilet can be one of the most dangerous activities one has to perform daily. Residents often have to walk away from their homes to access them. It is particularly dangerous at night because of lack of proper lighting. Many are robbed, raped and murdered on their way to and from these toilets.

Zille’s attitude to how these toilets must be cleaned is an example of her and her followers’ white privilege. I don’t know of one white person who uses and shares a bucket toilet with hundreds of others. It is black people that experience this kind of structural violence on a daily basis because of the many failures of our government.

Exploitation of desperate black workers is also exposed in the Checkpoint episode. Sanitation contractors such as Supreme Sanitation and Sanitech are given massive tenders to provide and service chemical toilets in informal settlements. Some of the workers employed by these contractors to clean the toilets are paid a disgraceful amount of about R600 (sometimes less) per month and are not provided with protective equipment. Many in government continue to defend these companies and pay them millions of rand of our public funds.

In the documentary an elderly man, Ebrahem Mofokeng, breaks down because of the dire conditions he and many others have lived in for decades. It is heartbreaking. The indignities and exploitation exposed in Johannesburg is no different to other municipalities. Communities and organisations such as the Social Justice Coalition (SJC) have campaigned and highlighted these issues for many years but little has changed. This is why in 2016 the SJC filed court papers in the Equality Court against the City of Cape Town for its failure to provide dignified sanitation services to poor, black and marginalised residents of informal settlements. The hearing for this case has been set for 16 and 17 October 2017.

Premier Zille’s time and focus should rather be spent on actually fixing these problems and not insulting people. DM

Axolile Notywala is a social activist and was elected as General Secretary of the Social Justice Coalition in June 2017. He also serves as a board member of the My Vote Counts (MVC) Campaign. Axolile is a 2015 alumnus of UCT’s Building Bridges Leading in Public Life Programme and a 2016 Mandela Washington Fellow. Notywala is the General Secretary of the Social Justice Coalition.

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