Residents of Zwezwe say they are forced to pay to use toilets stolen from other informal settlements
Peter Luhanga
A fee of R5 is being charged to Zwezwe informal settlement residents in Dunoon whenever they want to use one of the communal toilets in the area.
The chemical toilets in the informal settlement beneath power lines between Potsdam Road and Malibongwe Drive are not provided by the City of Cape Town, as the settlement is on private land, which the City cannot service without permission of the landowner.
Rather, the toilets placed at the Potsdam Road and Malibongwe Drive informal settlements are believed to have been stolen from nearby serviced informal areas such as Ekuphumeleni, New Rest, and Sibukwe. A R5 fee is now being charged for their use.
Community activist and South African National Civic Organisation (SANCO) branch chairperson Sinethemba Matomela says the toilets people charge R5 to use were originally stolen in October 2022. Matomela said some of these toilets were sold for between R500 and R800, and none of the stolen toilets were recovered or returned to the communities from which they were taken.
“Most of them were stolen and taken to Zwezwe.”
He said while the City has provided some toilets in the Zwezwe informal settlement, the area is vast and there are not enough City-provided toilets. The shortage in toilet facilities, he says, has led to some residents taking stealing, or buying, City-provided toilets from other informal settlements and profiting from the scarcity.
Having to pay fee for the use of a toilet is particularly difficult for people who are ill and suffering from diarrhoea.
Compounding the shortage of toilets and extortion is the lack of drinking water, and electricity. including water and electricity.
Once, the municipality supplied water through a tanker service, but that has since been discontinued, leaving residents without access to clean water and sanitation, along with resultant health risks.
Matters came to a head on 27 February when Zwezwe residents, joined by residents from Newlands and Rivergate informal settlements, blocked Potsdam Road and Malibongwe Drive with burning tyres and planks of wood in protest over their living conditions. The residents demanded urgent action from municipal authorities.
Sibongiseni Sibembe, 38, a father of three who shares a two-room shack in Zwezwe with his wife and three young children, spoke to Iliso laBantu. Sibembe said he has lived in Zwezwe since it was first established in 2019. He said residents in the Newlands informal settlement saw the lack of toilets in Zwezwe as a business opportunity. They managed to secure access to communal toilets, charging their neighbours R5 per visit to use them.
“If you have diarrhoea it means you have to pay per visit. If we don’t have money we must cross Malibongwe Drive (to empty land) to relieve ourselves” said Sibembe.
He said the water trucks provided by the City used to bring water, but that service had stopped. “We don’t have access to potable water,” he said.
There was also no rubbish collection in Zwezwe.
City mayco member for human settlements, Carl Pophaim, said Zwezwe informal settlement was on privately owned land, and was also a wetland unsuitable for housing.
Pophaim said while the City provides services wherever possible to people living on land that it owns. However, there were challenges to providing critical infrastructure to settlements on privately owned land and land unsuitable for human settlement.
Regarding electricity provision, he said Dunoon fell under Eskom’s jurisdiction.
Mayco member for water and sanitation, Zahid Badroodien, said the water and sanitation could only be provided to Zwezwe with the written consent of the landowner.
Badroodien said the provision of sufficient sanitation services is also impacted by the rapid ongoing growth of the informal settlement.
Additionally, he said the basic services team faced ongoing challenges of theft and vandalism of communal toilets. This made it difficult to assess and address the community’s sanitation needs.
While residents claim the supply of water by water trucks has been discontinued, Badroodien said said water tankers supplied water to the informal settlement twice a week.
“Each delivery consists of two loads, totalling 14,000 litres per trip, with an additional delivery provided if necessary, depending on the number of residents at the time,” he said.