Wasting the Nation.indd - Groundwork

Chapter 6: Down at the dumpsAs noted, DSW says that Bisasar Road will be closed around 2013. Given the historyof broken promises, it is unsurprising that residents of Clare Estate are sceptical. Eitherway, it is clear that the decision on closure remains impervious to their demand forimmediate closure. The current CDM Project Design Document responds bluntly:“This is not a feasible option from a municipal waste management perspective.” 93Kennedy RoadIn the shack settlement down Kennedy Road from Khan’s house, the project appearedto offer hope. Conditions there are dreadful. As Richard Pithouse reports:Many people have no viable livelihood and scrape out the most precariousand uncertain living. The tiny number of toilets 94 causes serious healthrisks, puts the safety of women and children at particular risk when seekingprivacy at night and imposes easily avoidable cruelties on the everydaylives of people with AIDS who often suffer chronic diarrhoea. The lack ofelectricity means fires and last year there were nine conflagrations. Childrenhave been found eating the worms that grow in the shit in the portabletoilets. Everyone seems to have someone who is desperately sick and thereare more than 50 households headed by children. [2006: 11]The settlement started in the 1970s as a small number of shacks hidden in the bush toevade the enforcers of the Group Areas Act. Several of the early settlers were familiesremoved without compensation from their farmlands a little way up the Mgeni valleyto make way for the Inanda Dam which now supplies the bulk of Durban’s water. TheKennedy Road site afforded them access to jobs and many worked as domestic labourfor people in Clare Estate. The opening of the dump provided a new income streamfrom waste picking for many.The settlement grew during the 1980s as apartheid started falling apart in the faceof increasingly overt resistance and expanded rapidly in the early 90s, encouraged bythe ANC slogan to ‘occupy the cities’. In power, however, the ANC’s position startedshifting. While the Kennedy Road Development Committee (KRDC) participated in93 CDM PDD: Durban Landfill-gas-to-electricity project – Bisasar Road Landfill, Version 2007-03-28, p.39.94 147 pit latrines were installed by the Urban Foundation in the late 1980s. The City stopped servicing them in2001 and installed six portaloos for the population of 6,000.- 146 - groundWork - Wasting the Nation