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OFF TO WORK: Every day at 6am, Mateboho Mothibeli and her friend Julia Lijane set out on their route through the Joburg city centre. Dustbins are their target and the waste inside that can be recycled for cash. Pictures: Refilwe Modise
Noni Mokati
It’s 5.20am and Mateboho Mothibeli jumps out of bed. It’s another day of work and she hasn’t time to waste. She dresses and applies home-made sunscreen to her face. It’s a brown cream-like substance made out of mud.
“It protects me from the sun,” she says and makes her way out of a makeshift cardboard room she calls home.
Mothibeli is among 60 hawkers who live with their families in a dilapidated and rat-infested factory in central Joburg, opposite the Kwa Mai-Mai market.
At 6am, a determined Mothibeli, and her friend, Julia Lijane, leave the decayed building.
The two work as recyclers, collecting anything from white paper, to plastic bottles and grocery packets.
THIS IS HOME: Mateboho Mothibeli wears her home-made sunscreen of mud outside the dark, abandoned building where she lives.
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It is a venture that Mothibeli began five months ago.
“I’m from Lesotho. I arrived in Joburg after my sister told me that she had found work for me. She told me to head to the house of a woman.
“But things later got out of hand and I couldn’t work for her. Our personalities clashed all the time. I left and ended up here,” she says.
She is wearing an old frock, a jersey wrapped around her waist.
“I take the jersey with me for the extra cold days. But it doesn’t help much. I cough and sneeze all the time.”
Soon Mothibeli picks up her trolley and dashes across the quiet road.
She has come to know the city’s streets like the palm of her hand – this is clear in how she maps out her route.
“I’ll first walk through Commissioner Street, then Marshall, Anderson and Market.”
As the mother of three walks through the biting wind, the city eventually roars to life.
The early buses ferry passengers and taxis accelerate like Formula One cars, only they’re competing to win the first client.
Pedestrians scurry up and down to their destinations. Mothibeli seems in tune with the ebb and flow of the urban jungle.
She and Lijane dig through rubbish bins lined up outside a flat. The stench is unbearable; they ignore it, and they dig, oblivious to the stares of bystanders.
“This job is like any other. There is no room for embarrassment in what I do.
“I’m doing this for my children. I need to pay the bills and put food on the table,” Mothibeli says,
She is collecting money to go home for Easter.
Her children and husband are back in Lesotho. However, none of her kids know what she does for a living.
“Imagine what it would do to them if they saw their mother scrabble through dirty bins. Unlike me, they wouldn’t take it well. They’d be embarrassed,” she says.
Mothibeli says recycling is survival of the fittest. Metro cops, motorists, residents – none seem sympathetic.
“The metro police sometimes harass us for dragging our trolleys on the road and not on the pavement. Then we have motorists who are inconsiderate and impatient. There have been a couple of instances where I was almost knocked over.”
Mothibeli pauses and rushes to another set of dustbins.
Sweat breaks out on her forehead as she rifles through the bin. She puts more plastic bottles in her bags. She’s racing against time – once the rubbish removal trucks arrive, it’s too late.
“When the Pikitup guys get here, they don’t ask questions. They just empty the bins.
“I suppose I can’t tell them anything. They are also at work,” she says and jokes that some of the bins smell better than others.
The trucks arrive to find Mothibeli hard at work. all that is left is for her to scrape up the bits of paper left on the ground and set off in search of another bin.
Her sack is full and she compares it with Lijane’s. She says she is lucky.
The two rest on a pavement and begin to sort out the biodegradable products.
Plastic goes in one pack and bottles in the other.
Then comes the long walk to the factory she calls the “scrapyard”, to get her money.
The sun is at its peak and Mothibeli pulls her mountainous sack. She hasn’t eaten today.
“I only eat when I go back home. I use the little money I’m given to buy dinner,” she says.
She says she doesn’t work on rainy days.
At Motech Recycling in New Doornfontein, Mothibeli joins the other recyclers on Staib Street.
Most are men. But that doesn’t intimidate her.
She approaches the gate and registers her name with a security guard. Her bag is weighed – she gets paid R70.
Tomorrow is another day.
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