With the publication this week of Good Riddance, urban planner Tanya Zack and photographer Mark Lewis reach the halfway mark in Wake Up, This is Jo’burg, their 10-book series of Johannesburg stories. This is an edited extract:
Lucas Ngwenya, Given Matatiele and Livingston Sekunda have lined up. It’s 6am and there is a cold wind blowing on this open piece of land suspended between the private estate of the Oppenheimer family and the head office of Hollard Insurance. The temperature is four degrees as the men begin their second trip to the recycling depot in Newtown. It’s a 5km journey but it will take two-and-a-half hours to drag their gargantuan loads over the top of the Witwatersrand.
Lucas seemingly has the lightest burden. He has a double trolley whereas the others have three articulated trolleys. His three bags are outnumbered by Livingston’s five bags and the metal objects sticking out of Given’s bags add considerable mass to that load.
But Lucas points out that the cardboard that occupies more than twice the capacity of the blue plastic quilted bag it is loaded into and on top of will weigh in at over 150kg. And the plastic bottles and white paper will bring this to 265kg. His body mass is 61kg.
When he arrives at the depot he will be asked for R10 “for cool drink” from the cashier as he cashes in his load. Because, she says, she has been generous with the amounts she has recorded.
They collect waste from different parts of the city, sometimes walking over 30km in a day. It is more efficient to work together and to stockpile their materials for two weeks. Every fortnight they make the journey to Newtown three times.
They work co-operatively although each lives alone. Lucas lives in the cavity of a highway underpass, where the repetitive crack of traffic passing over expansion joints on the bridge above him mimics the sound of an evening train. He came to South Africa from Mozambique at the age of 22, to earn money to support his mother and brothers back home. He started out working for his uncle but when he wasn’t paid he left and started collecting waste. Now he can earn R400 a week and send money home. “I can turn R100 into 400 meticais.”
The 62-year-old Livingston has used plastic bags and blankets to create a tent-like shelter under a bougainvillea.
Given occupies a ledge on a rocky outcrop where he is shaded by a tree and overlooks the motorway. “The noise helps relieve my stress,” he says.
His stress centres on his longing for his children, who live in New Brighton in the Eastern Cape. Yellow, white and red wax stalactites hang from the fissures in the soot-covered rock face. The speckled rats that forage in the surrounding bushes and peep into the burnt tins on this ledge cannot reach the packet of rice that Given has hung from a tree branch.
On the main ledge of this outdoor dwelling a flattened teddy bear serves as carpet. A higher ledge in the light shade of a tree is Given’s bed. It is covered with blankets, a soft jacket and a pillow inner. Mobiles of beads, dried herbs, bones and red feathers cling to branches around the sleeping area. And a fluffy tiger – the size of half a man – stretches across a branch overhead.
Lucas pulls his hoodie tight over his head. The steep descent on to the main road requires him to start his journey not by pulling the load but by resisting it. He leans against the front of the cart with the ironing-board handle gripped behind him. His entire body weight, the power of his legs and the traction of his rubber-soled shoes brake the load. He skids forward gingerly. He can’t look back and steers the unco-operative bulk with difficulty.
As Given passes him and sweeps his load into the more predictable uphill of Oxford Road his blanket flaps in the wind like a cape. Soon all three bodies are taut and angled. They instinctively sway to counterbalance the rhythm of the carts. The incline is extreme and bodies are now leaning forward at 45-degree angles, traversing the steepest points on tiptoes. A taxi driver hoots his annoyance as he speeds by, passing within inches of Lucas.
Along the more level side of the road the men can take their time navigating the speed bumps. A group of joggers passes by. It’s a suburb of chimneyed houses, many with national monument plaques that inform us of the early 1900s genesis of these stately homes. But none of the materials in these trolleys have been collected in Forest Town. The men are prohibited from collecting here by the private security firm that guards the area.
They have been threatened with pepper spray and chased out of the neighbourhood. Livingston says: “You will never find a recycler collecting on these streets.” He says he would rather walk far to work where no one harasses him and he can quietly do this job that he says he loves because he knows that he will never go hungry as long as he can pull his trolley.
They enter Jan Smuts Avenue, which will take them into the inner city. As they turn the corner the front wheel of Given’s trolley slides into the gutter and the entire load tumbles over. Plastic bottles litter the sidewalk and the road. The pace and effort of pulling is interrupted by the tedious repacking and retying of bags. Then they move again.
For the steepest parts the men combine their muscle power to pull a single load uphill. One man pulls the trolley while another pushes. It takes them 30 minutes to scale the 300m incline of the hill.
The haul is finally at the depot. Between them they have carried 780kg of material along this route. Their combined earnings are R1 ?200. They return to Forest Town to collect the third and final load of the day.
The landfill
Mbuso Shabangu lifts a bag of clothing from his car boot. He changes out of his jeans and his sleeveless T-shirt that reveals the large “thug-life” tattoo on his arm. In a soiled pullover, brown pants and boots, he walks up the road that ascends the landfill site. He has worked here for eight years, since his father died and Mbuso took over his job at the age of 19. He is one of a handful of reclaimers who work this site where the city’s waste arrives in huge dumpsters.
Before the garbage is compacted, these men extract and bag the recyclable materials. Buyers arrive in trucks to collect the material. It’s a straightforward and guaranteed income and these are prized jobs. “I can fill up to 10 bags a day,” says Mbuso, holding up his first 100kg bag of the day.
He employs two men to gather cardboard and plastics for him. “We make a tonne a day,” he explains. “600kg is mine and they share 400kg.”
He earns enough to support his wife and three children in a rented room nearby. He has three cars and is saving up for his next dream – to start a buy-back centre.
“We work together here,” Mbuso says. ‘We know each other and if someone wants a job here the supervisor will ask us if we can take him in. We must be sure of the person. We want peace here and not stealing. And we help each other. If someone’s relative dies, we collect money to help with funeral costs.”
But the real co-operation here centres on watching each other’s backs. Literally. There are rules. Do not come to work sick or drunk, don’t make fires, don’t take another reclaimer’s stock. But two rules stand out: never have your back to the compactor, and watch out for each other’s safety.
The dumpster arrives and for a moment birds and men cluster on the higher ground. As it spills waste the men pull out the large cardboard sheets. The birds file behind the dumpster. They crowd and shuffle like rats on the ground, pecking for grubs that have been unearthed by the passage of the truck. A water tanker follows, spraying the ground.
The driver stops to allow one of the men to fill his cool-drink bottle from the spout at the back of truck.
More birds fly in and settle on the garbage as the compactor rolls up to squeeze the soft, acrid piles of rubbish against the latest layer of retaining wall constructed of building rubble.
“The birds work six to six, just like us,” says Mbuso. There are pigeons, white ibises, egrets and, astonishingly, seagulls. A recycler laughs from where he is standing knee-deep in the rubbish. He throws his hands into the air and scatters birds, now pink against the light, across the city skyline.
Published by Fourthwall Books, Good Riddance and the four preceding titles in the Wake Up, This is Jo’burg series may be bought from Fourthwall Books, Shop 5, Norvic House, Reserve Street, Braamfontein, Johannesburg. fourthwallbooks.com