Debbie Fox
As KwaZulu-Natal’s cholera outbreak prompts school lessons on health education, a Western Cape community is reaping the rewards of a disease prevention and environmental awareness programme brought right into the home.
Community workers at Imizamo Yethu have found weekly door-to-door education the key to improving waste management in the 500 serviced and 1 500 unserviced sites straddling the mountain above Hout Bay.
Cleaner streets, greater cooperation between residents and officials, and greater individual responsibility for waste sorting have resulted from the Imizamo Yethu Waste Management pilot programme.
Man-o-Man Mazele, one of the programme’s four community waste educators (CWEs) and chair of the Imizamo Civic Association, says the initiative sprang from desperation. “Last year we came together with local leaders and NGOs to discuss how to manage our waste better. We thought that if conditions didn’t change, automatically cholera would come to the community.”
Those conditions included refuse rotting in bags put out on the wrong days for collection; rubbish accumulating over years because street congestion blocked access by council trucks, and water from blocked drains spreading excrement to the doorsteps. The community had originally been serviced by 26 waste workers from the Cape provincial administration, but Imizamo’s 1997 incorporation into the South Peninsula municipality cut the number of workers to four. “We’ve got to realise that it’s our responsibility as the youth to volunteer ourselves to clean our area,” says CWE Bongi Gonkca.
Trained by an environmental NGO, the Fairest Cape Association, the CWEs are funded by the government’s Clean and Green programme for half-time work: discussing waste disposal difficulties, dealing with complaints, and visiting and revisiting residents to reinforce basic waste management principles. Tips include how to fill refuse bags economically, how to store them on the roof away from scavenging dogs until collection day, and how to separate bottles, cans and paper for recycling.
“The programme’s initial objective was to remove the piles of waste that had accumulated,” says Barbara Jenman from Fairest Cape. Residents rallied round for “clean-ups”: mass gatherings to sweep up and remove the detritus of years. But such efforts, costing up to R30 000 a time, failed to stop rubbish building up again.
“Now we see the clean-ups mainly as opportunities to get people together,” says Mazele. “Then you can talk to one another, one by one. You check: what is he doing? Then you explain it’s not supposed to be like that.”
Such intense personal input lies at the heart of community waste management, says Jenman. “Everyone in the street could be tidy with their waste except one person. Then he goes and spoils it for the whole street so it’s very difficult to see the improvement.”
The CWEs have devised their own gauge of individual improvements. After each house visit to explain correct procedure, the discussion is noted privately in a record book and a mark given on the next visit if the instruction has been followed. In this way residents requiring greater motivation can be identified.
While project staff admit improvements are hard to quantify, they see residents gaining pride in their surroundings. The community is also learning to “own” its waste. “When people are concerned about who’s doing the mess, I tell them: ‘It’s you,'” says Mazele. “The task of the munici- pality is only to collect the bags.”
Relations between residents and officials have improved with the formation of a steering committee comprising project staff, municipal managers and community leaders. Grievances are now aired openly, says CWE Thembisile Dyani.
“Before this project there were no channels where we could meet council officials. It was them and us pointing fingers at one another.” Efforts are now more streamlined, such as the coordinated initiative against dumping by Hout Bay residents.
“People bring their old stuff and just throw it here,” says Dyani. CWEs and council law enforcement officials have now joined forces to track down and fine the dumpers.
Despite such breakthroughs, the project still faces huge physical obstacles. Massive overcrowding hinders access by waste removal trucks. In storms, soil dislodged from Imizamo’s sandy slopes blocks drains and rubbish collects around fallen logs on the mountainside.
However, with the pilot in its last few months, staff are focusing on their greatest area of impact: education. While working amid rats and rubbish is demoralising, says Dyani, he envisages a day when “this place will be as clean as any other community, when people know to take responsibility for their environment”.