I’ve always thought of him as my dustman — chubby and avuncular in his bright yellow council T-shirt as he hauls our wheelie bin across the steep street to a location more congenial for the truck that will follow.
He seems to have a notional seniority in the garbage crew and gets first pick of the cast-offs discarded by denizens of our pricey little enclave beneath the mountain. Last year’s Blahniks, a cellphone that has actual buttons — you know the kind of thing.
We always exchange a smile and a wave of a Monday morning as I leave for work, and in the evening I find the wheelie bin, not obscuring the garage door and forcing me to jam up the Clifton-bound traffic while I move it, but neatly to one side.
The relationship between consumer and clean-up man is an intimate one. He knows things about me I wouldn’t tell my closest friends: drug prescriptions, eating habits, financial records, alcohol consumption, so I am glad it’s also congenial.
Last week, however, things took a turn. I’d like to think it’s just because he’s getting sick of the festering nappies heaped on top of our more congenial leavings over the past year (I know, I know, I keep walking past the organic reusables at the neighbourhood feel-good emporium in a nimbus of guilt) but the truth is uglier.
The fact is that I buy the smiles each year with a generous ”Christmas box”. I know my R200 is generous because in Cape Town year-end donations to postie, street sweeper, and yes, dustman, are a long-established tradition, always recorded in a little black Croxley notebook so you can see what the neighbours paid, or so the guys on the truck can audit the payout.
I don’t mind paying this annual sweetener, even though it’s in some ways a reminder of old and unpleasantly paternalistic Cape Town, not to mention a breach of governance principles.
And I planned to pay it this year, even though Helen Zille’s new, efficient, non-paternalistic city council has banned the practice, and wants me to rat on my dustman when he solicits the cash. R226 this year, to take account of inflation.
But on Monday — with only three more garbage days till Christmas — I didn’t have cash in the house. ”I’ll give it to you next week”, I said, quite truthfully. ”No problem,” he replied cheerily.
When I came home, the wheelie bin was still by the garage door, still gravid with nappies. ”Perhaps the truck is late”, I thought. Except that all the other bins had been emptied.
I’d like to call the new, terribly efficient council. I know they would sort it out. When our loquat tree was transported into the street by a storm they cleared it in hours; when a power cut hits our dodgily wired area, a big yellow truck quickly rocks up to fix it.
The thing is, if I complain, someone might discipline my dustman, and then I’ll really be in a world of hurt.
The smiles will disappear, but the rubbish won’t. Or when it does the bin will be parked in front of the garage, and the topless cars heading to the topless beaches will stack up angrily behind me as I move it.
It’s a supremely effective protection racket, and I just can’t see my way around it. Helen may rule the council chamber, but even on the leafiest streets, Cape Town has much older laws. Flout them at your peril.