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Vivian Mooki

HUNDREDS of Gauteng residents are still subjected to the inhumane bucket-toilet system despite promises by local government MEC Qedani Mahlangu to eradicate the system by March this year.

Each week, residents of areas like Protea South, Kliptown and Ivory Park have to endure an awful smell as a municipal truck drains and cleans their ablution facilities. To them, this is just one of the heart-rending reminders of empty promises made by government officials. When the country was celebrating Freedom Day last week, they had nothing to celebrate.

One such resident is Ellen Sikojane (75), who has been living in Protea South since 1982 and has lost all hope of ever using a proper toilet.

“I’ve been using the bucket-system toilets since I moved into this house in 1982,” she says.

“When the new government took over, we thought things would change as we were promised proper toilets but we were given plastic ones instead and they are also bucket-system ones.”

Though she has a brick and mortar house, unlike her neighbours who live in shacks, she still feels dehumanised by the bucket toilets.

“What we are going through is so sad. Having to endure the awful smell every time the municipal truck comes to drain the toilets is killing us but what can we do? We were promised toilets but we are still stuck with these,” she says.

She is among hundreds of Gauteng residents who cheered when President Thabo Mbeki announced that all bucket-system toilets would be eradicated by last year.

This jubilation was later fuelled by Mahlangu and Gauteng premier Mbhazima Shilowa, who promised in February 2006 that 12 000 bucket toilets would be replaced before the end of last year.

“The bucket system has been a painful reminder of the indignity and deprivation of the past. I am therefore pleased to announce that the end of the bucket system in Gauteng is in sight. By the end of June this year, all of the 12 000 identified buckets will have been replaced ahead of the 2007 national target set by the president,” Shilowa said during his 2006 budget speech.

Human Rights Commission spokesperson Vincent Moaga says: “It is unacceptable that after the president made a promise that bucket-system toilets would be eradicated there are still communities using the system.”

“It is unacceptable that the government cannot even meet its own target. What would happen if the community was to set its own target?”

Sikojane’s neighbour, Dorothy Mahlangu, agrees and says: “These toilets are very bad. They do clean them each week but we would prefer decent ones.”

Mahlangu is unemployed and spends some of her days making her own charcoal so that she can cook, warm her shack and warm water for her children in the morning. She has been searching unsuccessfully for a job.

“There are no jobs, no houses and making this charcoal is my only way of ensuring that life is a little bit better here at home,” she says.

Protea South, like Kliptown about 5km away, has endured its fair share of service delivery protests but these yielded no results either.

Like all the empty promises they have heard before, the residents have little faith in Mahlangu’s promises of better toilets.

Democratic Alliance spokesperson for housing and local government Kate Lorimer says the problem is worse in areas like Doornkop.

“There are much more sordid conditions. In Doornkop people use plastic bags as toilets and this is just too bad,” she says.

She says she will raise the matter in the Gauteng legislature. “They must account for this failure,” she says.

But local government spokesperson Themba Sepotokele maintains that Gauteng has no bucket toilets.

“Those are not buckets but ventilated improved pit latrines – VIPs,” he says. “All the 12 332 identified bucket toilets were eradicated and replaced with either water-borne toilets or VIPs in Gauteng by the end of June last year.”

Sepotokele says residents in areas like Protea South are using VIPs because they are to be relocated to other areas. “The VIPs are provided by the municipality in areas situated in unsuitable or dolomitic areas. We can’t put permanent infrastructure there.”

But Lorimer is unimpressed.

“It is not good enough for bucket toilets to be replaced with either chemical toilets or VIP ones. These are, in reality, no better than bucket toilets,” she says.

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