Ann Eveleth
A sign outside the Kudube Waste Disposal Site in Temba township near Hammanskraal warns: “No hazardous or toxic materials allowed.” But it also tells visitors: “All persons and vehicles entering this site do so at their own risk.”
Both warnings go unnoticed by the dozens of Temba residents picking through the rubbish for treasures like the kitchen waste dumped by the Carousel gambling complex; walking through the dump to their homes; or playing on heaps of dirt.
It was here that 25-year-old Glenton Monnane lost most of his left hand last June. “I picked up something from the ground that looked like a straight pin and I wanted it for one of the cars I was fixing. I was struggling to pick it up when it exploded,”s aid Monnane, a motor mechanic.
Two fingers are missing and his palm is a bubble of flesh grafted from his groin. His chest is a map of shrapnel scars, as is the cornea of one eye.
Brits bomb squad investigators blamed his injuries on a practice grenade detonator. They found seven of these in the vicinity of the blast.
The nearby Hammanskral Police Training College and the Wallmansthal army base both use the dump, but both claim they only dispose of “household” waste there.
Monnane is not the only casualty of explosions in the vicinity. Five-year-old Annatjie died last July when she picked up a rifle grenade, allegedly 800m from the Wallmansthal border.
Her mother, Caroline Khutumela, had sent her to gather firewood. “But they didn’t bring wood home, just that thing. I only saw later that they were playing with it, but it exploded before I could stop her. We all ran. When I came back, Annatjie was lying in blood and it had blown her hands off. The face was black and the knees were raw. It was too late,” she said.
Khutumela and her son, Johannes, were both injured in the blast, and are complainants with Monnane in a case the Pretoria Legal Resources Centre is investigating related to the disposal of weapons.
A Department of Defence representative declined to comment pending the potential legal action, but claimed that although the Wallmansthal unit dumps at Hammanskraal, “no ammunition [is] dumped with household waste. After every shooting exercise all duds … are destroyed.
“Possibly due to human error … unexploded duds are left behind. It is for this reason that the areas [around the base] are regularly swept.”
But Joseph Baloyi, who lives in a shack in the centre of the dump, remembers “some times when big explosions happened here. The soldiers used to dump them, but no more. Now they’ve shifted to Durabuild.” He points to a building 1km away.
The Mail & Guardian found a spent automatic rifle cartridge in the pile of rubbish behind the building after spending five minutes there. Only the South African National Defence Force (SANDF) and the South African Police Service use such magazines.
Police training college deputy commissioner Superintendent Charles Masemola admitted they have used the dump “since the establishment of this college in 1972”. But he also claimed that only “garden refuse, tins and so forth” were ever dumped there.
Group for Environmental Monitoring representative Richard Sherman said such incidents were common. Land claimants on defence force land have complained that the SANDF has polluted land under claim in Masita and Lohatla.
The SANDF admitted recently that unexploded shells could be lying around in parts of the Greater St Lucia Wetlands Parks it once used for a base, and several 127 missiles were discovered in Sodwana Bay last year.
“The disposal of ammunition falls under the explosives Act … but at Wallmansthal they were clearly in violation of their own rules,” said Sherman. “I don’t think it’s as simple as getting ammunition mixed up with household waste. It’s negligence.”
Temba mayor Joseph Letlape, said the military is not contracted to dump anything at Kudube. “The only people we have arrangements with is Carousel,” he says.
Moves to register dump sites in South Africa only began with the 1989 Environmental Conservation Act. Department of Water Affairs and Forestry assistant permitting director Gerrie le Roux says only 294 of the estimated 1 200 to 1 600 dumps have completed the permitting process.
Gauteng regional permitting official Bertus Oelofse confirmed that Kudube had applied for a permit and said the process did not require them to disclose who dumped there.
“They just have to say what kind of waste is dumped there. Kudube says no toxic or hazardous wastes are delivered to the site,” he said, referring queries to his legal adviser.