Threat to dump faeces in front of City Hall
By Bongani Mthembu
Durban’s executive committee member Nigel Gumede punctuated a heated Human Rights Day demonstration outside City Hall on Thursday with calls for closer co-operation between local government and shack dwellers.
His plea came amid threats from the city’s informal settlement dwellers to dump buckets of faeces in front of the City Hall if the eThekwini Municipality fails to provide them with toilets.
The informal dwellers were among a number of organisations and individuals who yesterday celebrated Human Rights Day by marching to the City Hall with numerous demands which they said were basic human rights the city fathers had failed to address.
The shack dwellers, who came from different informal settlements in and around Durban, claimed their attempts to persuade council to provide them with toilets, proper housing and land had fallen on deaf ears.
“We are now tired of promises and we want to teach council a lesson. We will dump buckets full of human waste right in front of the City Hall. We believe the municipality has an obligation to provide us with toilets. This is a human rights issue. You can’t expect people to live without toilets,” said one shack dweller.
The municipality has had a number of ugly confrontations with the shack dwellers, who organised numerous protests prior to local government elections last year.
Abahlali Basemjondolo, an organisation that fights for the rights of informal settlement dwellers, went so far as to mobilise its members to boycott the elections.
Gumede, who is also chairman of the housing portfolio committee, admitted there were settlements that did not get municipal assistance to deal with the shortage of toilets.
However, he blamed the residents for failing to work closely with municipal structures to address the problem.
“Some informal settlement dwellers, such as those in Kennedy, are working very well with us. We clean their pit toilets to ensure they do not get full. The municipality also provides portable toilets in number of informal settlements,” he said.
“It is important to make it clear it is not true that the municipality is ignoring the plight of informal settlement dwellers. We have put aside R70 million for the provision of toilets in the informal settlements this year.
“The reason why there has been a slight delay in spending funds, is because we want to make sure we get people with relevant skills to do the work. We also want to make sure that we involve the community when we do it,” added Gumede.
* This article was originally published on page 2 of The Daily News on March 22, 2007