Bucket toilets will remain part of the South African landscape, despite promises by President Thabo Mbeki, premiers and provincial ministers that this dehumanising system will be eradicated shortly.
Last year in his State of the Nation address Mbeki promised that by the end of 2007 all South Africans would have access to sanitation and no one would have to revert to buckets or bushes when nature called.
In Gauteng Provincial Minister Qedani Mahlangu made the same promise, setting the target of no buckets by 2006. Both deadlines have come and gone.
The department of water affairs and forestry says it refuses to provide sanitation to those who have invaded unused land and erected shacks without permission to do so. The department argues that, by providing these services, shack-dwellers will be encouraged to invade more land.
But the Gauteng department of local government insists it will not limit itself to these constraints. Buckets will be eradicated wherever and whenever they are being used. The difficulty lies with the mushrooming of informal settlements because of high numbers of people migrating to the province. Says spokesperson Themba Sepotokele: ‘It is like the wheel reinventing itself all the time.â€
The province eradicated 12 323 buckets that were identified in townships such as Kokosi in Merafong, Evaton in Emfuleni, Rietvallei in Mogale City and Masetjhaba View in Ekurhuleni. Yet some have been overlooked.
Seventy-three-year-old Evelyn Mmapudi Modisane has been using the bucket system where she lives in Kliptown, west of Johannesburg, since 1973.
‘I’ve been using the bucket toilet since I came here in 1973 and nothing has changed since then. Last year they [government officials] came, saying we would get flushing toilets. I would like to have a toilet one day like other people and move to a new area as well. But the way things are going, we would never get toilets, because if they wanted to give them to us they would have done so long time ago,†said Modisane.
This year Mbeki will have to prove to people like Modisane that the government intends to keep its promises.
Government says capacity to spend the municipal grants allocated annually for the provision of services, including proper sanitation, is limited. These grants, totalling R30-billion, are meant to give municipalities the boost to ensure improvement in service delivery.
The situation is improving, says director general for provincial and local government Lindiwe Msengana-Ndlela, but she admits the ‘pace and quality have not met expectationsâ€.
Citizens in Bekkersdal, a township in the west of Gauteng, however, were able to swap their buckets for ventilated improved pit (VIP) toilets which were installed last year. These toilets use very little water and are more environmentally friendly.
Muriel Makubo uses these Easy Loo toilets. She says the community was forced by the government to use these when the refuse removal did not collect their buckets for weeks.
‘Even the Easy Loos are dirty. There are more than 20 people with whom I share the toilet. It’s always dirty because everyone uses them. People who are at sheebens use them, so there’s really nothing better,†Makubo says.
Although the municipality is supposed to clean the toilets weekly, she claims cleaners sometimes do not come for weeks and they have to go back to using buckets.
Makubo says that during the night she uses a small bucket to avoid going out to use the Easy Loo.