Alexandra residents live on the edge of a health hazard

Dump sites come back to bite the residents of Alexandra, north of Johannesburg, as air-borne and vector-borne diseases rise and living conditions deteriorate. 

 Construction rubble piled up in a heap, 

disused household items and office furniture,  

branded cardboards ripped out of their commercial life, 

crinkled-up paper carrying designs of ink from one end to another.  

Empty takeaway containers greased with oil from an indulged meal,  

plastic and glass bottles weighted by the last drops of fizzy beverages in all their funky colours. 

All of this basking in the sun as though waiting to restore their purpose… 

This is and has been the back-yard view of thousands of residents living in Alexandra township, proudly referred to as Alex or Gomora, north of Johannesburg, for several years. Within 10 minutes of riding the Gautrain from Park Station, many privileged people overlook this toxic wasteland from the comfort of an air-conditioned express commuter train shunting through a system worth more than R30 billion. 

If lucky, one can even spot an element of the waste cycle in action. It’s either a resident throwing out a bucket filled with rubbish without a second thought, or a truck offloading construction rubble and industry debris right outside the rusty shacks as children, some as young as two years old, play on the dumps.

Depending on what time of day it is, one could also watch as a scattered group of recyclers sifts through waste to collect what will be their bread and butter at the end of the week or month. These are normalised day-to-day activities in the informal settlements of Setswetla, Jukskei View and the new EFF settlement.

The dire state of dump-living 

Densely packed shacks in these settlements now form a guard of honour on the banks of the waste-clogged Jukskei, the narrow 50km-long river feeding the Hartbeespoort dam in North West. Nurtured by apartheid spatial planning, Sandton (Africa’s richest square mile) neighbours one of the continent’s poorest communities, while the ever growing waste in illegal dumping sites remains unacknowledged. An area of 144km2 in Sandton is home to 220 000 people, as found by the 2011 census report, while 180 000 people occupy the land in Alex’s 6.8km2 – which means every square kilometre houses about 26 000 people. Simply put, one Sandton resident has the same sized space as 17 Alex residents.  

“When we started working on cleaning the river and its banks in August 2021, the river was flowing. It does not anymore [it’s clogged with rubbish].”

This inequality, South African human rights commissioner Philile Ntuli contends, is “continually reproduced and sustained [by] the apartheid social and political order [as] the hostels, ghettos and tight corners are an endless confrontation with colonial perceptions of the incompetence and sub-humanity of African people”. To date, the sub-humanity Ntuli speaks of explicitly plays out in two ways: trucks unloading building rubble right outside people’s houses in Alex, when the nearest construction site from which it is collected is in Sandton; and the multitude of municipal service shortcomings. These shortcomings include raw sewage, poor sanitation, inadequate housing and abundant refuse that is neither collected nor catered for with the provision of refuse bags and containers. This is according to a SA Human Rights Commission report prompted by the township’s “devastating” service delivery protests in 2019.  

During these protests, former Gauteng premier David Makhura promised to urgently stop the building of “illegal structures” – people’s houses being made of concrete palisades or rusty corrugated metal sheets. Typically, this call for an urgent halt to illegal land occupation was not accompanied by strategies for the housing backlog, which has persisted since the early 2000s when the township began seeing an influx of residents. 

Not only have things remained largely unchanged, but more people have occupied the vacant land near illegal dumping sites. This has brought on the growth of the illegal dumping economy. On the day Wits Vuvuzela visited the area in October 2022, truckers could be seen unloading waste and then paying an unemployed male resident R50 to unpack the waste, shovel it out and dump it in the Jukskei River. All the while, patient waste recyclers watched, marking their next haul which they would attempt to rescue from drowning.

The newest settlement in Alexandra stretches across the river from Jukskei View. Photo: Keamogetswe Matlala

Making a living from the dump 

For waste recycler Seijo Joaquim-Neves, collecting plastic bottles from the riverbank dumps is “ukukhereza (hustling)”. “Ngikala amasaka ngenyanga. iR2 000 ngiyay’thola noma ngikhereze kahle (I recycle about four sacks a month. I earn R2 000 when I say I’ve hustled well)”, the Mozambican national said. From his earnings, Joaquim-Neves is able to “bhatal’irent, theng’ukudla (pay rent, buy food)” and “qash’imoto (hire a van to transport his bottle-filled sack to the recycling depot)” for R200. Although he collects a haul of waste every weekday on the Jukskei banks, Joaquim-Neves does not work oblivious to the health threats. He wears a face mask and hand gloves to protect himself from microorganisms that could potentially carry viruses. Less than a year since he took a leap into waste recycling, the young recycler admits this is a lucrative livelihood in Alex. 

It is not only plastic bottles that carry the livelihoods of Alex residents. Used bricks are also recycled in the bid to put food on the table. Bongiwe Msimanga collects such bricks to sell at R1 each to people to build houses within the informal settlements that sprout like mushrooms across the township. She says, “Work is scarce and food is expensive.” The 50-year-old mother of one claims that living in Jukskei View is cheaper and she has easier access to the dump site from which she makes a living. Although dumped bricks alleviate the struggle of raising her now 21-year-old child, Msimanga admits it was wrong of them to occupy land so close to the Jukskei River and contribute to its dire state with illegal dumping.  

Seeing that people rely heavily on these dump sites to put food on their tables, will illegal dumping ever end in this community?

Although he is deeply involved in efforts to ensure an end to it, chairperson of the Alex Water and Sanitation Forum, Janky Matlala, admits the problem of illegal dumping is getting out of hand. “When we started working on cleaning the river and its banks in August 2021, the river was flowing. It does not anymore [it’s clogged with rubbish],” he says. Matlala adds that there is still a lot to be done, in addition to their cleaning project (Water Warriors), which runs for two to three days each week at seven points of the river cursed with dump banks.

The health effects of living near a dump site 

In a forum lecture titled ‘Climate change: the greatest global health threat of the 21st century’, Stellenbosch University head of the family and emergency medicine department, Professor Bob Mash, tabled pollution, biodiversity loss and climate change under the ecological drivers of the growing burden of diseases on the country’s healthcare services. The possible causes of this burden include compromised air quality, no access to fresh water, infectious disease exposures and natural hazards, while factors mediating it are, but not limited to, governance as well as the culture and behaviour of a community. Unlike many theoretical assertions, this tabulation is evident. 

Given the fact that informal settlements are hardly ”recognised” by municipalities because the residents are considered illegal occupants, they do not receive basic services such as electricity, water supply and sewage systems. As a result, it is normal to have residents of Jukskei View resorting to relieving themselves in buckets and throwing the waste into the river. Meanwhile, in the new EFF settlement, a woman with a crying child strapped to her back cooks pap on an open fire near that same river bank. It is the only space where she can do this, as shacks are packed so close to each other. This screams ”health hazard”. This not only explains why, in the afternoon, it starts smelling like “sun-baked faeces that have dried up after rain has fallen,” as Msimanga describes it, but also why another resident, Shelly Mohale, battles so much with house flies. Mohale says she has to clean pots right after cooking and transfer the contents to plastic containers to avoid having house flies contaminate the food.  

Commonly known as “filth flies” for their infamous diet, which includes animal waste, faeces and rotting organic waste, these flies release pathogens – microorganisms categorised as viruses, parasites, worms and bacteria that cause diseases and illnesses. These range from common cold, flu, meningitis and measles to yellow fever. A senior health sciences student from Sefako Makgatho University, Lighton Sombane, confirmed that these ailments (together with typhoid fever, cholera and tuberculosis) are a few of the 65 diseases flies can transmit to humans. It is therefore reasonable to attribute this to what another Alex resident, Jeffrey Mashigo, whose gate is less than seven metres away from the dump banks, says is an all-year-round flu. “They [children] always have the flu and taking them to the clinic doesn’t help because every two weeks, the flu comes back,” the father of four said. Since warm temperatures exacerbate house flies, Gauteng’s frequent heat waves have residents needing to close the doors and windows of their homes to avoid the flies, hindering ventilation in the process. 

According to Mashigo, it becomes unbearable at around 3pm, when the smell of all the dumps becomes worse. At this point in the waste cycle, the greenhouse effect takes charge as a consequence of gases from the dumping contents such as methane, carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide concentrating in the atmosphere. As found by the Natural Resources Defense Council, this concentration “absorb[s] sunlight and solar radiation that have bounced off the earth’s surface”. Instead of escaping into space over time, these pollutants “trap the heat and cause the planet to get hotter”.  

All the while, people inhale this toxic air and many more residents like Msimanga, who cough all year round, blame the dust that sweeps through their yards for their dry throats. Even though carbon dioxide is the most common greenhouse gas people are generally exposed to, research that nitrous oxide is 300 times more potent as it depletes the ozone layer, exposing humans to UV radiation which could potentially cause skin cancer and permanent damage to eyes. Additionally, “UV radiation causes a decrease in immunity and makes the body more susceptible to infection with viruses or parasites,” says environmental journalist Sabrina Shankman. Nitrous oxide can also live for an average of 114 years in the atmosphere. Methane, on the other hand, is 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide, according to the United Nations environment programme, and is naturally released by decomposition, a common dump feature. It also reduces the amount of oxygen available for people to inhale, consequently causing headaches, vision problems, nausea and a change in heart rate. Although these were not revealed in interviews with Alexandra residents, the potential is not ruled out.  

In some instances, as accounted for by an academic look into the effects of landfill human exposure in Thohoyandou, Limpopo, pollutants form acidic moisture in the atmosphere which results in acidic rainfall. Falling victim to this, people stand the risk of “reduced lung function, asthma, ataxia, paralysis, vomiting, emphysema and lung cancer when heavy metals are inhaled or ingested”. As research found illnesses such as high blood pressure and anaemia to be caused by heavy metal pollution, Msimanga’s confusion seemed to have cleared. Before moving to Jukskei View, Msimanga says, she was never as sickly as she is now, with constant foot aches and chronic hypertension.  

While cleaning the Jukskei River in Alexandra as part of the Water Warriors’ initiative, Mandla* also collects plastic bottles to cash in at a recycling depot. Photo: Keamogetswe Matlala.

What now?

Without the greenhouse effect, the average temperature of Earth is scientifically proven to dip as low as -18 degrees celsius from 14 degrees celsius. Furthermore, almost four trillion metric tons of ice from glaciers in Antarctica have melted since the 1990s. This is not only a significant loss of the world’s fresh water but also an indication that sea levels are gradually rising. In the next rainfall season, the Jukskei could potentially break its silence by washing away hundreds of homes that stand in its way. The occurrence of devastating floods used to be something far from South Africa’s reality, but it has become evident with floods this year in the coastal provinces – KwaZulu-Natal, Western Cape and Eastern Cape – that they are closer than it was thought.  

Water Warriors volunteer Betty Mano, who was born in 1971 and has since lived in Alex to witness the deterioration of it, believes the problem of illegal dumping would not have grown as bad if the government had provided the community with waste containers. Despite the fear that aborted human embryos – the worst ”waste” they have found dumped – would be found more often, Mano says direct human exposure to toxic pollutants would be kept at a minimum. 

When you disembark at the Marlboro Gautrain station and walk into the township, you are met with two clean open fields: the Water Warriors’ attempt to put vacant land to good use. In the next few months these fields will become recreational parks, and not places where traditional healers and churches perform their rituals as they were a year ago.

*Not their real name

FEATURED IMAGE: Mandla* fills a sack with recyclables after a day of cleaning the Jukskei River. Photo: Keamogetswe Matlala

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Waste pickers of the urban landscapes

It is a hot Tuesday afternoon and informal waste pickers, those who retrieve recyclable items thrown away by others, approach the recycling yard situated on the premises of the Green House Project on Wolmerans Street, Johannesburg.

Placed in a small corner, with an entrance separate to that of the Green House Project, the recycling yard is a beacon of hope to the 392 informal waste collectors that walk through its gate.

With shoes that have fallen apart and makeshift trolleys, these informal waste pickers walk great distances collecting bottles, plastic, paper, boxes and cans which they sell for a small sum of money. A big blue skip bin is placed in the centre of the yard where workers sort the trash brought in by the informal waste pickers into organised heaps.

The recycling yard, run by a South African based company called Trash Back, focuses on improving the quality of life of informal waste pickers with the hopes of moving those who are homeless off the streets.

Manager of the Trash Back branch on Wolmerans Street, Sipho Moyo, said: “My collectors are guys from the streets, so in actual fact this recycling unit was established to help these guys.”

“In the long term we plan on getting these guys out of the streets,” said Moyo. “We plan to get them a flat, but for now we are working together with them.”

Moyo, a friendly and approachable 35-year old, explained that before he started working at the recycling yard, which opened up at the beginning of this year, he was a manager of a restaurant here in Johannesburg.

A waste picker sorts through the items he has collected, placing each item into its recycable category.
SORTING: A waste picker sorts through plastic and cardboard within the recycling yard. Photo: Leanne Cummings
SORTING: Workers at the recycling yard place the cardboard into a large skip bin. Photo: Leanne Cummings

“ I came here because I love working with, let me rather say I love helping people, so when they told me this project will be starting up solely to pull these guys off the streets that’s when I joined,” said Moyo.

Moyo said that after working throughout the night, waste pickers “come here [to the yard] first thing in the morning”. Moyo said that depending on what is brought in, the waste pickers are “given money, and in return we are given what we need, the waste products”. “They go out and come back much later again to make enough money to buy food and the basics that they need,” Moyo said.

“I tell them what items to look out for and what items to collect,” said Moyo and he explained how much the informal waste pickers are paid according to the different items that are brought in.

Moyo said he gives the informal wastepickers:

R10 per kilogramme (kg) for aluminium cans,

R1.15 per kg for LD, a clear plastic,

R2.70 per kg for PET, which are the cold drink bottles,

R 1.50 per kg for HL1, which is white paper,

R2.20 per kg for PP, which is the hard plastic, and

R2.20 per bottle for HD, which are the milk bottles.

RECYCLING: A worker within the yard sorts through several bags that are filled with recyclable objects. Photo: Leanne Cummings

Moyo continued to explain that “the people that help me sort out stuff [in the yard] are people that I got from the streets”.

“I saw that they were hard workers and so I pulled them out and now we work as a team where I pay them a salary,” said Moyo.

While hiding in the shade of the skip bin from the scorching hot sun that is beating down, *Collins, a waste sorter in the yard, wipes the sweat that drips down his face with the sleeve of his overall.

“Let me tell you about the story when Sipho found me,” he smiled.

The short, soft spoken 27-year old said: “There was someday where I was at a garage here in Joburg and I was collecting in a bin. He [Sipho] was busy at the petrol station, waiting for people to pour fuel there. He saw me collecting some of the things and he managed to call me. He wanted to get me off the streets,” said Collins.

“I didn’t believe him at first, but he told me he was serious and he wanted me to get a job and come and see him,” said Collins. Shaking his head Collins said: “I was thinking to myself that he was just bluffing. You see, some of the people they promise you empty promises.”

Collins explained that he decided to go and see what Moyo had to offer three weeks after he had been spotted at the petrol station. After seeing Moyo, Collins still worked as an informal waste picker for a few months before he was hired by Moyo to help sort out the items that came into the recycling yard.

Collins added that he earned a salary of R1700 per month, by working as a sorter in the yard, where he “manages to pay R400 every second week for a flat at Hilbrow Safari”.

Collins shares a small two bedroom flat with a colleague that works at the recycling yard. Collins sleeps on a thin, worn out sponge mattress that is placed on the floor and a few items of clothes hang in a cupboard.

Collins is silent for a few short moments before he hangs his head in his hands…“but before that, yoh! yoh! yoh! It was very difficult”, he said.

“The reason why I came to eGoli you know,” said Collins is that “it symbolised a way of life. Like even if you came from a background where it is very poor, at least you could come to Johannesburg to find a job to cover transport and your family.”

HELPING HANDA worker helps a waste pickers cart his trolley through the recycling yard to the weighing area. Photo: Leanne Cummings

From its discovery of gold in 1886, the city of Johannesburg has been seen as a city of new beginnings with the opportunity of a new life and an abundance of jobs. The vibrant, culturally diverse city life attracts locals and migrants, like a moth to a flame.

However not all is gold in Johannesburg as there is a prominent divide between  rich and poor, and like most developing countries the unemployment rate is skyscraper high. According to Africa Check, South Africa has one of the highest unemployment rates in the world.

Collins who grew up in the location of Hammanskraal, Pretoria, worked in a restaurant Wings in Witbank, before coming to Johannesburg in 2008. Collins said that he came to Johannesburg because he thought that he would be able to find a better paying job.

“I find one day I just wake up and I’m lying on the streets, before when I was at home, I didn’t think that one day I would end up on the street”, said Collins .

The struggles of the street

Collins explained that at a young age he got involved with the wrong crowd where he was introduced to drugs and intimidated into committing crimes. Collins said that when he came to Johannesburg he was smoking “crystal meth” and explained that he used the little money that he earned as an informal waste picker to buy the drugs to feed his addiction.

“I just started to be a collector because I just came up with the idea – what can I do to produce drugs?” said Collins. “So I start selling chrystal meth, weed and the paddling stone where they call it nyaope.”

The drug Nyaope is a concoction of rat poison, dagga, antiretroviral medication and heroin and *Jackson, an informal waste picker who currently lives on the street said that Nyaope was a common drug that is found on the street.

Jackson a tall and slender 33-year old said that “most of these guys they have a problem on smoking, yeah, this Nyaope”.

“It’s a terrible thing that they do just for the fun of it and at the end its killing them. Some even go to hospital” said Jackson. “They spike themselves with this Nyaope, with injections that they get from the pharmacy”, Jackson said.

Jackson said that he too used to smoke Nyaope but explained “you see, now I see my life is going down the drain, nothing is going fine.

I’m not free, I’m always stressed, you don’t know what to do and you all mixed up”, said Jackson. “I see, no man, the more I smoked the more I get this problem, but now since I quit[ in 2010] my life now I can see where I’m going”, Jackson said.

Collins too said that he no longer smokes drugs and added that “there’s no big proper rehab centre that I haven’t been to”.

“I’ve been to Bronkhorstspruit, Magalies. I’ve been to Brakpan, Springs, Witpoort Care Centre and I’ve been to one in Pretoria” said Collins where “I’ve been in for eight months in each of them” he added.

“I don’t know what would happen today if I was staying on the street”, said Collins. “Even all the crimes I’ve done. I’ve been to prison you see and that’s why I needed to get off the street, cause that’s the problem I don’t want to do all those things again” Collins said with a croak in his voice.

“There are dangerous things that happen out on the streets,” Collins continued. He looks around the recycling yard and smiles. “It’s just a wonderful opportunity to be here, it’s a wonderful job.”

Collins explained that in 2014 he was involved in a house break-in in Boksburg after which he was locked up for two years, “but even today I am serving my parole,”said Collins.

“I got out of prison last year,” Collins explains and adds that “it was hard in prison, but I managed to pick up from there just being alone. Even the people I was going there [to the house break-in] with, they are big criminals, even the ones that make the murder and violence it was not nice…I don’t want to go back there [to prison],” said Collins.

Collins said he doesn’t have many friends and that he is not a “friend person”. “The reason for me just to be in jail and smoking drugs is because of friends, so that’s why I don’t want friends,”, said Collins.

Jackson, in a separate conversation to Collins, also brought up the fact that the streets are very dangerous to live on due to crime.

“Sometimes you meet those guys that rob you of your things,” said Jackson. He leaned against the wall and said “two of my friends, in the past two weeks, they got burned and set alight,” said Jackson.

Jackson said that it is very hard to live on the streets, especially in winter or on cold nights. Jackson stated that his one friend made a fire to keep warm and “was smoking rock when he fell asleep and then he leave the fire and it just catches everything,” said Jackson.

ANOTHER DAY’S WORK: A waste picker pushes his trolley towards the recycling yard where he can exchange goods for a small amount of money. Photo: Leanne Cummings

“My other friend, he get, uh died,” said Jackson. His face that was light with a smile earlier in the conversation had dampened out to an emotionless expression. “They [criminals on the street] just caught him and just light his blanket. They said he robbed one of their colleagues you see,” said Jackson. “We haven’t seen them [the criminals] since.”

“Sometimes you meet cops, Metro cops, that take your blankets,” added Jackson “and you can’t do anything about it.”

Hopes and dreams

Both Jackson and Collins say that they are grateful for the recycling yard. Even though there are others down town, “this one is the best,” said Collins.

“They friendly, they work nicely with people you know. You can even borrow money and we have some showers where we can bath here everyday,” said Jackson.

Jackson explained that he completed his first year of mechanical engineering at Witwatersrand University. However could not complete his studies as the people who paid for his education could no longer pay for him anymore. “I’d really like to go back to school,” said Jackson. “If I find a good job with enough money I can go back to school because living on the streets, and doing nothing, is not easy,” Jackson added.

Collins said he hopes to keep the job at the recycling yard so that he can send money home to his only other living relative, his grandmother, who lives in Boksburg. “You know your life it is what it is, if you look at the things you know what happened in your life and in your future – there is still opportunities out there,” Collins smiled.

FEATURED IMAGE: Waste pickers dragging waste around. Photo: Leanne Cummings

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