Xolani Koyana
March 30 – that was the date Human Settlements Minister Connie September had promised would mark the end of the bucket system.
“We are targeting the bucket eradication for the end of March 2014,” September said on March 10 after she accepted a SA Human Rights Commission report on access to water and sanitation.
“We are working very hard to ensure that we eradicate the bucket system in South Africa. We have done so in the Free State, Eastern Cape and the Northern Cape,” the minister said.
But when Yandiswa Holiday from Barcelona in Gugulethu went to the toilet yesterday – she used a bucket.
“The smell is really bad, especially on a hot day like this,” the mother of three told the Cape Times.
“They only came to empty the bucket for the first time in three weeks after we complained and said we would dump the toilet on the council offices.
“Even the workers who clean the toilets tell us they are scared about their health because there are maggots on the outside.”
Holiday’s family, comprising five people, shares the toilet with three other households.
Although she was not aware of plans to eradicate the bucket system, Holiday said she would welcome any initiative that removed it.
Based on census data in 2011 there were close to 60 000 bucket toilets in the province, 48 509 of them in Cape Town. Ward 40 in Gugulethu, which includes Barcelona and Europe informal settlements, had 5 145 bucket toilets.
The bucket goalpost has now been shifted.
September’s office said the programme to eradicate bucket toilets was likely to be implemented in the “coming weeks”.
Despite failing to meet the March 30 deadline, September’s spokesman Vusi Tshose said the minister was “proud of the remarkable achievements in three weeks”.
Mandisi Ntlokwana, who has lived in Europe informal settlement for 22 years, has never had a flushing toilet. He arrived in 1992 from Nyanga.
“There were no toilets at that time and we had to use the fields near the N2 as toilets. The government came with the bucket toilets and we have been using them for a long time,” Ntlokwana said.
He shares the single bucket toilet with Mbuzeli Ngqoza’s family and a third household.
“It fills up so quickly because there are a lot of us. That is also not safe because people get sick from using the toilets. We would be really be happy if the government could give us flush toilets,” Ngqoza said.
He said that the bucket was replaced three times a week.
The SA Human Rights Commission’s report said that in most parts of the country access to water and sanitation was inhibited by non-functioning or defective infrastructure.
The reports states that about 1.4 million households have never had sanitation.