Wasting the Nation.indd - Groundwork

Chapter 1: Dust and Ashesenvironmental justice movement thus saw ‘putting it in black people’s back yards’as the other side of the coin to ‘not in my back yard’. The principle has now goneglobal as corporations export waste from North to South in search of cheaper and lessprotected recycling labour or unregulated dumping. In many cases, recycling is merelya cover for dumping.South Africa’s apartheid planners similarly located poor and black communities nextto polluting mines, industries and waste dumps. Waste services were well developedin white areas and the waste dumped in black areas, while basic services for waste andsanitation and water and energy were systematically neglected in black areas. Formaltownships received partial and perfunctory services which were not expanded evenas population growth was stimulated by the policy of removals from ‘white areas’.Removals also led to the creation of large and completely unserviced settlementsin rural areas or on the distant peripheries of the cities. Human waste and garbageaccumulated, smoke filled the air and water sources were contaminated or difficult toaccess.In the post-apartheid period, government ‘rolled out’ housing, electrification and waterprojects. These programmes have been highly problematic, with poor quality housingreproducing slum conditions and electricity and water delivered on the basis of costrecovery, resulting in the ‘beneficiaries’ being regularly cut off. In 2000, under pressurefrom civil society, government announced free basic water and electricity provision.This provision has been miserly, however. Combined with new technologies of prepaidmetering, people are still regularly cut off because they do not have the money tofeed the meter when the free supply runs out.Government was tardy in addressing sanitation needs. In 2003, it published Towardsa Ten Year Review [SAG 2003]. The document gave new attention to sanitation and,in 2004, government said it would “eradicate the backlog” in sanitation by 2010 andeliminate the bucket system by 2007. By March 2006, 15,3 million – just short ofone third of the population – were still “without adequate basic sanitation facilities”according the official South Africa Year Book [SAG 2007: 600]. The 2007 budgetallocated R400 million to municipalities for a “final push to eradicate the bucketsystem”. The South African Municipal Workers’ Union (SAMWU) comments, “Thisdid not eradicate the bucket system. Instead the goalposts were shifted to say that thismoney was for eradicating the bucket system in ‘formal’ informal settlements only.Wasting the Nation - groundWork - 15 -