Category Archives: toilets

Cape Argus: Neighbours’ loos for hire

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http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&click_id=&art_id=vn20100729132844354C241597

Neighbours’ loos for hire

By Natasha Prince and Bronwynne Jooste
Staff Reporters

Some Khayelitsha residents have to pay up to R10 each time they want to use the toilets at their neighbours’ homes because they don’t have their own ablution facilities.

Residents in QQ Section in Site B, who live in shacks, fork out between 50c and R10 to their neighbours who live in formal houses.

In another section of the city’s sprawling township, Site C, residents have to relieve themselves on a stretch of grass in full view of passing cars on the N2.

There are toilets nearby in Site C, but some of these are locked by individual residents who hold the keys, while others are broken, damaged or overflowing with human waste.

Using the stretch of grass as a toilet is dangerous: residents say that they are mugged as they walk to the area. One man was stabbed in the face and robbed of his cellphone earlier this year.

When the Cape Argus visited the area this week, human faeces littered the grassy area and the stench was overpowering.

It is not only adults who use the field as a toilet. Parents fear that their children are risking their lives.

Residents who use the area regularly said they had few options because the closest toilets were too far from their homes.

Some said they walked to a neighbouring area in Site C to use toilets provided by the City of Cape Town.

Thokoza Thulumani, who accompanied her two young daughters when they needed to use the grassy patch, said she “did not feel right” about using the field.

“Sometimes these little children want to run into the street (the N2); it’s not safe for them,” she said.

Mzimasi Kese, 31, said “having to go” in the open made him “feel bad”.

“I don’t feel right because so many people driving past in their cars can see you going.”

Kese said sometimes people brought toilet paper while others used newspaper which they softened by rubbing.

There are 12 concrete flush toilets in Site C.

About six of these are locked and others have been vandalised or are blocked and have plumbing defects.

Nomfusi Jezile, who uses these toilets, said the keys to the locked toilets were kept by some residents and could be obtained when requested.

“It’s better when they keep the keys because the toilets are cleaner and the children can’t play in them,” she said.

Ward councillor Nontsomi Billie said the city had the toilets for the area, but that there was no land on which to erect them.

She said some people in the area used the portable toilet system.

“If the toilets are not enough, they (the residents) should tell the street committee members who report it to me and I contact the city and processes are put in place,” she said.

Sowetan: Council takes back toilets

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http://www.sowetan.co.za/News/Article.aspx?id=1147720

Council takes back toilets
02 June 2010
Anna Majavu and Sapa

Eleven people were arrested in the Cape Town township of Khayelitsha as protests over toilets continued, Western Cape police said.

Captain Anneke van der Vyver said the suspects will appear in court today on charges of public violence.

The N2 highway was blocked with burning tyres until lunch time yesterday.

The protests began at 5.30am yesterday, with residents burning tyres over the city’s decision to remove their toilets completely.

On Monday, Cape Town mayor Dan Plato authorised officials to swoop on Makhaza, in Khayelitsha, and remove 65 toilets.

He said the toilets would only be returned once the residents had erected their own enclosures.

Plato claimed that the residents had promised in 2007 that if the city gave them one toilet each, they would build their own enclosures.

But several residents told Sowetan last week that they never made such a promise. They demanded that the city build proper concrete rooms for their outside toilets.

Community organisations have slammed both the ANC and DA.

Abahlali baseMjondolo activist Mzonke Poni, from QQ Section in Khayelitsha, accused the ANC of “using the poor for their own political gain ahead of next year’s elections”.

“The DA was also wrong – they should have held proper talks with the people, whether they felt they were led by the ANC Youth League or not. Removing people’s toilets is a complete waste of taxpayers money,” he said.

The Social Justice Coalition’s Angy Peter, who lives in nearby RR section, also slammed the ANCYL and DA.

Peter said her organisation “condemns the incitement of violence by the ANCYL”.

But she warned that the removal of the toilets was unconstitutional because everyone has a right to sanitation.

“Instead of rising above the dispute and reconciling with the residents of Makhaza, the city has embarked on collective punishment,” she said.

“The removal of the toilets without any notice is unreasonable. Residents have gone from having an unacceptable level of sanitation (open air toilets) to no sanitation whatsoever.”

Peter slammed Plato’s call on Monday for residents to burn tyres against the ANC.

“These words are also tantamount to incitement.

“As a leader we expect him to bring calm to such situations, not to put people’s lives at risk by fuelling the fire,” said Peter.

Cape Times: Half a million without santitation in Cape Town

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http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&click_id=13&art_id=vn20100301081722818C250646

Half a million have no loos
March 01 2010 at 11:01AM

By Anel Lewis
Metro Writer

More than 100 000 households, or half a million people, in Cape Town do not have access to basic sanitation.

According to a research report by international initiative Water Dialogues South Africa, about 37 percent of the 128 000 city households living in informal settlements have no access to any sanitation system.

While more than two thirds of these residents have been supplied with bucket sanitation options, including the black bucket and Porta-Pottis toilets, the report notes that the servicing of these toilets falls “far short” of required standards.

Karen Goldberg, who prepared the report, said the figure of 100 000 households with no sanitation at all was not reported in any of the city’s official reports.

The city’s reported sanitation backlog of 47 650 households only refers to households without any form of sanitation.

The 80 500 that reportedly have some form of sanitation have to rely on the bucket system, which is not considered a basic form of sanitation.

“It is clear from the research that the data available is not being properly interrogated. This is leading to misreporting which has significant implications for planning.”

The city has about 3,3 million people or 884 000 households and population growth is estimated to be 1,65 percent annually.

This includes an influx of about 48 000 people each year to the province.

The city has been under fire recently for its provision of basic services.

A furore erupted when the ANC Youth League complained about open toilets in Khayelitsha. The city said there was an agreement with residents that they would build the enclosures if the council provided the toilets.

The report criticised the city for “falling short” of its monitoring and regulation responsibilities.

Goldberg said the officials in charge of the contracts did not make sure that the service providers adhered to their contracts.

“The only regulation that currently appears to be occurring is through reporting mechanisms which is grossly insufficient and open to abuse.”

Goldberg said the city had an “ad hoc” approach to sanitation service provision and that planning for informal settlements was “haphazard”.

She said this was partly because of the city’s perception that informal settlements were temporary and not worthy of long-term investment or planning.

She said the city’s strategy was to provide emergency levels of service to all informal settlements, and to improve these services over time.

Goldberg’s report noted that only 2,6 percent or 64 staff of the city’s water and sanitation department worked in informal settlements.

anel.lewis@inl.co.za

Sunday Times: A crisis of dignity – 5 humiliating years later

http://www.timeslive.co.za/sundaytimes/article284174.ece

A crisis of dignity – 5 humiliating years later
One of a human being’s most private acts is a daily ordeal for these families
Jan 30, 2010 8:25 PM | By Buyekezwa Makwabe

Ntombifuthi Mdibaniso dreads answering the call of nature. The matric pupil has been cleaning up human excrement for the past decade – often with only plastic bags to cover her hands – to earn the right to use a neighbour’s toilet.

The humiliating ritual has become a way of life for the 19-year-old, who lives in a shack with her parents in a section of the sprawling township of Khayelitsha in Cape Town.

There are no toilets for the hundreds of families crammed into the shantytown known as QQ section.

Those who need to relieve themselves can beg to use a neighbour’s toilet in exchange for some form of payment, use a plastic bucket in their own shack, go to the toilet in the bush or join long queues to use one of four communal toilets in another section.

The Sunday Times discovered the plight of Mdibaniso and her neighbours five years ago – she was then aged 13 – during turbulent protests over poor service delivery in the then ANC-run city and province. The young teen was reduced to tears by the filthy task.

Today the people of QQ section still face a crisis of dignity – under a city and province now run by the DA.

Minister of human settlements Tokyo Sexwale shed light on what was fuelling the crisis when he told MPs in parliament this week that the number of informal settlements in the country had soared from about 300 in 1994 to more than 2600 .

“Millions of our people are squatting … It’s a disaster in our country, it’s Haiti every day,” he told the portfolio committee on human settlements.

Another toilet crisis in Khayelitsha made headlines this week after the ANC Youth League accused the DA of violating people’s rights in nearby Makhaza. There, the city built more than 1000 toilets for residents on condition they erected their own walls around them. The furore has led to a probe by the Human Rights Commission.

But Mdibaniso said this week that having a toilet without walls would be better than nothing at all. “Things are much better in the rural areas where one will have a tap and a (pit latrine) toilet in the yard,” she said.

Mzonke Poni, a housing activist with Abahlali Basemjondolo – a community group fighting for better housing – described the situation in QQ section as a gross violation of human rights.

“I’ve heard of incidents where women have been raped when either crossing the N2 to relieve themselves or walking to beg for the use of a toilet in another section,” Poni said.

Said Mdibaniso: “When (neighbours) tell you that their toilets are blocked, you have no option but to use a bucket. If your house is in a dense area where there is no gap between the houses, the bucket will have to be used inside the house.

“One then has to walk with a full bucket to dump it in a drain along Lansdowne Road. It becomes a disaster when the drains are blocked,” she said.

She said it was difficult to take the 15-minute walk across a bridge over the N2 freeway to conduct one’s ablutions in what was once an open field, because of rapidly expanding shacks.

There are four communal toilets in a nearby section of the township, but Mdibaniso said there were long queues from dawn of people too afraid to relieve themselves outside at night.

City of Cape Town spokesman Kylie Hatton said authorities had wanted to provide portable toilets in QQ Section but residents rejected them because they wanted to be moved away to “formal erven and receive houses”. She said 4000 rented chemical toilets had been placed in areas around the city to ease the ablutions crisis.

“The housing backlog is estimated at 400000 households,” said Hatton.

Mdibaniso said: “What I want is for us to be moved from this place to a place where there is space so that we can get access to water, a working toilet and electricity.”

Vuyelwa Cogwana, a squatter in Makhaza, where the city erected the controversial open-air toilets, said: “I have been moved three times in three years. I cannot build walls around that toilet or use it because this piece of land is not mine. The owner may move in tomorrow and what would happen to the material I’ve used?”

The toilets at Makhaza, most of which have been shielded from public view by residents, are part of the city’s informal-settlement upgrading project.

There are nearly 4000 bucket toilets still in use in and around the city of Cape Town.

According to the Department of Water Affairs, over three million families and 828 schools in the country have no access to basic sanitation. – Additional reporting by Anton Ferreira

makwabeb@sundaytimes.co.za

Cape Argus: Residents attack police during protest

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Residents attack police during protest

April 29 2009 at 12:29PM

By Nomangesi Mbiza and Natasha Prince

Lansdowne Road in Khayelitsha was turned into a war zone for the second consecutive night as residents vented their fury over service delivery problems, forcing police to close the road in the face of stonings and burning of tyres and rubbish.

The protesting residents in Site C charged that they had seen no change in the area in 15 years, with conditions now deteriorating further.

“We have no toilets, no water and no electricity, and we are being forced to connect electricity illegally,” said resident Justice Tshaka.

On Tuesday municipal workers spent much of the day clearing the charred remains of rubbish, tyres and three containers after protests on Monday night, sparked by the arrest of four residents accused of stealing electricity.
Last night protests resumed in both the AT and BT sections of Site C, with the police closing Lansdowne Road and diverting traffic after residents started stoning cars.

Another resident, Nawakhe Kula, said her husband had died in 2008 after he was hit by a car while crossing the road to throw water down a drain opposite them.

“We don’t have drains and toilets. We don’t have anything and speeding cars make the situation worse,” she said.

Kula said the police could “come and shoot us” because they would continue blockading the road “until someone come to address us”.

“We are actually not scared of police any more because we are tired of being isolated and treated like we don’t exist,” she said.

Khayelitsha police spokesperson Constable Mthokozisi Gama confirmed that residents had initially become angry on Monday when they arrived to arrest the four, charged with stealing electricity from one of their neighbours.

The resident who laid the charge claimed she had got an electricity account of about R1 500 for a single month after four neighbours connected their homes to her power source without her consent.

Last night one of the four was released on bail, with the others due to be released today.

o This article was originally published on page 1 of Cape Argus on April 29, 2009

http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?art_id=vn20090429121942662C105014