Mukoni T Ratshitanga
Athol Fugard may have been writing about inhabitants of the electricity department’s disused building in downtown Johannesburg had the characters of his People are living there not been too few and employed.
The inhabitants of the building belonging to the Market Theatre Company – where Fugard’s play premiered in March 1977 – are too many and unemployed. They eke out a living selling cardboard boxes, tins, plastic and other rubbish discarded by the city’s affluent population.
“We wake up early in the morning. Say about 4am. Between 5am and 9am, we move into the city to collect boxes. After 9am, we take them to the recycling centre in Bree Street,” says David Ndiki, who lives on the ground floor of the building.
The recycling centre pays Ndiki and colleagues 20 cents per kilogram for the waste. On average, Ndiki makes R10 a day – “enough to get something to fill your stomach” – though there are times when they make five times as much.
“During the weekend, our business is better because shops throw out a lot of boxes. You must rush though, before the municipal trucks arrive to take them. If I’m lucky, then I make R80 to R100.”
Ndiki came to live in the building in August after a settlement near the railway line in Braamfontein was torched at dawn. “I am happy here,” he remarks.
Although he has three children he left behind with his older brother in the Eastern Cape, Ndiki has vowed never to return home.
“How will I go back home?” he asks. “What will I eat when I get home? Hunger will not disappear simply by the act of going home.
“You see, living here is 100 times better than home because I don’t bother anyone.
“Here is the city,” he says, throwing his hands up towards the sky. “It gives me boxes to make a living. I know my brother is crying too because he doesn’t work.”
Ndiki owes his survival at the settlement to his strong heart. “If you don’t have a strong heart, you perish. We are not like some of you who are permanently employed. You can afford to loaf around without doing much. Ours is a different case altogether.”
Another inhabitant, Sipho Mkwanazi, is both a linguist and a “freedom fighter.” In 1993, he was thrown in jail, then aged 15, for his activities with the Azanian People’s Liberation Army.
After his release, he added Chinese to the impressive list of languages he speaks – Sesotho, Isizulu, Xshitsonga, Afrikaans and English. “I worked for a Chinese restaurant in Commissioner Street. Most people don’t believe that I speak the language, but get me a Chinese [speaking person] and you will think I was born in China.”
Mkwanazi brought with him some politics to the settlement. “This,” he points to the first floor “is called Parliament, the ground floor is called Lusaka and the second floor is the Union Buildings.”
Not that there is any significance in the names. “But no one does as they wish in Lusaka,” he says. “They know I’m around.”
But there have been problems of people “doing as they please”, says Herry Madila. “Some people come here to take photographs and exhibit them in all sorts of places. I don’t want us to be turned into zoo animals to be watched. We are people too.”
He complains bitterly about street vendors throwing their rubbish in the building, the reason for the foul stench and flies that fill the place.
“We are trying to keep this place clean and this is what they do. The city council tells us that the place is a health hazard,” Madila says.
With no running water and toilets, the council’s concerns don’t seem far- fetched.