Wasting the Nation.indd - Groundwork

Chapter 3: The politics of wasteChapter 3: The politics of wasteThe Waste Management Bill is currently on its way through the parliamentary system.It has been a long time coming. Waste was a low priority for the apartheid governmentand remains a low priority for the post-apartheid government. This chapter traces thehistory of how environmental justice activists politicised the issue of waste – and thereaction of the South African state and corporate waste managers to it.Throughout the 20 th Century, South African municipalities tipped waste in old quarriesor any convenient open ground. Management of some sites in the larger towns andcities was more or less formalised in time. In smaller towns, the dumps grew intomounds and hills or waste was simply dumped in the veld.The waste was typically dumped in black areas. The pressing issue in the townships,however, was the lack of services. The National Environmental Awareness Campaign,founded in Soweto in the aftermath of the June 1976 uprising, identified theaccumulation of filth in the streets as a serious health hazard. Arguing that apartheid’spuppet local councils could not deliver on this or other services, it used clean-upcampaigns to pioneer the articulation of environmental issues within the understandingof liberation. The call resonated with broader demands for decent services. Thirty yearslater, the rubbish is still not being collected in many areas while the more generalpaucity of services remains central to people’s experience of injustice.Waste was meanwhile inching its way onto the agenda of the apartheid regime. In 1972,parliament held the first “comprehensive discussion” on national waste legislation.The Hoon Commission was appointed several years later to investigate waste issuesand reported in 1980. Its recommendations were taken up in the EnvironmentConservation Act of 1982, the first law governing general waste, although to littleeffect. Draft waste control regulations were published for comment in July 1985, andagain in August 1988, but not promulgated “due to limitations in the Act”, accordingto Bredenhahn and Airey [1990]. Finally, in August 1990, a general notice officiallybrought landfills under a permitting system under the authority of the Department ofWater Affairs and Forestry (DWAF). DWAF subsequently published the ‘minimumWasting the Nation - groundWork - 33 -