Moloko Bopape. M&G
Twenty-seven-year-old Soweto resident Moloko Bopape says his job is his ”passion” and he ”wouldn’t be doing anything else”. He gases rats.
The City of Jo’burg has embarked on a rodent eradication drive in four major townships. While exterminating vermin is a big part of the project, the campaign mainly focuses on encouraging people to keep their communities shipshape.
He wages ”war” on the rats and says it is a battle that Johannesburg residents can win. He says he loves his job and he wants a ”clean environment for his people”.
The City of Johannesburg embarked on a 90-day rodent eradication campaign earlier this month in Alexandra, Orlando East, Ivory Park and Orange Farm.
Orlando East residents say rats have become an overwhelming problem.
”Rats … soon they will eating us,” says Democratic Alliance Orlando East councillor Moipone Rakosa wryly. ”There are plenty of them. We have some instances where they bite little ones”.
Residents are kept awake at night by rats scurrying across the roofs of their shacks and say rats eat their mielie meal and clothes.
Rakosa told the Mail & Guardian that the city was not doing enough, and that more fumigation needed to take place. Rakosa said she lives in a house, not a shack, but found a rat and five babies when she moved a room divider recently.
Bopape has been fumigating, or gassing, rats, for the last four years. He says he loves meeting with communities grateful at the decreasing numbers of rodents.
On a recent Johannesburg winter morning in Orlando East, Bopape and five other city employees struggled to start the petrol-driven motor that pumps carbon monoxide into rat burrows. The motor eventually turned over, and two men — batons raised — took up position on either side of a burrow. Either the burrow was empty, or the rats preferred to remain out of sight.
Nicky Mazibuko, operations manager for the Johannesburg’s department of environmental health, said while getting rid of rats was part of the programme, education was the main focus.
He said communities had been asked to keep their dustbins closed, and avoid dumping dirty water with food scraps. He said the communities had also been encouraged to wrap up food before throwing it away.
”Dumping is a major problem. Litter attracts rats from the veld and provides them material for shelter. Rats have become bigger. They eat wiring in cars and destroy property,” said Mazibuko.
Overcrowding, though, adds to the problem. Mazibuko says once shacks are built in a confined area, dustbins begin to overflow and there are blocked toilets.
Meanwhile, Bopape soldiers on.
”If this what keeping the environment clean entails, I will do it.”
