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RUBBISH day gives me a lift – I love the very cheerful greetings I get from the waste-pickers as I do my morning walk.
I know a lot of people find them irritating as they manoeuvre their loads of salvaged rubbish through the streets, but I have a great deal of respect for them – I spent some time with waste-pickers from India and Costa Rica during COP17 in Durban, and since then have also visited dumps round Gauteng to document waste-pickers locally. Nobody could possibly work harder (and in more unpleasant circumstances), effectively recycling the litter left by our excessive consumption.
Last week, just before Christmas Day, I visited the Randfontein Municipal Refuse Site with Community Led Animal Welfare (CLAW), who were there to play Santa for the children of the dump. As with many waste sites, there’s a community living alongside it, in shelters cobbled together from bits of signage and torn shadecloth and wood.
And coming into the world and growing up there, in these extraordinarily rough circumstances, are children. Children whose little faces glow with hope and mischief and energy, just like all children everywhere. It was great fun to bring a little sparkle into their lives, dishing out dollies and soccer balls and token treats like suckers and crisps.
The waste-pickers live at the grubby end of our wonderful, shiny consumer society. As you tramp through the dirty, dusty streets of this community, you can see our detritus underfoot and all around: a broken computer mouse ground into the soil here, rags that were once the glossy silk of a designer dress there, piles of plastic bottles still flashing brilliant reds and greens and yellows.
In amongst the rubbish, huge pigs root around contentedly, followed by healthy, happy little piglets. Roosters and hens peck and scratch, their proud red combs evidence of good health.
There are dogs everywhere; on this visit, we found a young Maltese terrier who had been brought to the dump and abandoned there by people in a flashy car, we are told. (This is a common occurrence: the ‘Dog Boys’, youngsters who look out for the dogs living here, can point out every one that was dumped here. Mercs and Beamers feature large in these tales. Many of the abandoned dogs wind up being cared for tenderly by these feral boys, who are far more thoughtful than the rich people who so carelessly and cruelly chuck their dogs out onto the garbage.)
CLAW gained consent from the people who had rescued the Maltese to take her away, although they let her go reluctantly, with many hugs and kisses. They didn’t have the wherewithal to groom her and her coat was matted into a thick felt.
The waste-pickers toil in the merciless sun, foraging for useful or saleable items on the huge mound of refuse. They reduce the amount of waste that has to be landfilled; they recycle useful substances like tin and plastic which we in the suburbs have tossed into our bins without a thought for the cost to the environment; and they endure the contempt and disapprobation of people like us because they are dirty and ragged.
My thoughts return to those international waste-pickers I met in 2011 at COP17. My day trip with them to a waste site just west of Hillcrest and the dump outside Pietermaritzburg was unforgettable, exciting, eye-opening. There were several translations going on at the same time: Spanish for the Costa Ricans, the Zulu of the people picking waste on the dump and the language spoken by the waste-pickers from India (I’m not sure which one of India’s many languages it was).
Son got his degree on waste-picking earnings
When she heard I was a journalist, one Indian woman, whose skin was coarse and hands rough and calloused from a lifetime of waste-picking, spoke urgently. The interpreter turned to me and said: “She wants you to know that she put her son through university picking waste; he got his degree and he, too, is now a journalist.”
She showed me a picture: an earnest, be-suited young man, the intelligence shining from his dark eyes. He has a real shot at reaching his potential, thanks to his mother’s life of hard labour.
The Indian waste-pickers fought hard for recognition of the value of their work; they persuaded the city to issue them with ID cards to show their bona fides; they earned the right to build a large shed in which to do the sorting of waste, and a shop just outside the site where they sell refurbished stuff.
As I ring the New Year in, I will be thinking of the waste-pickers and others at the bottom of the heap. Trickle-down economics has not worked for them; in fact, I saw a cartoon the other day which equated belief in trickle-down economics with belief in Santa Clause and the Tooth Fairy. “Surely you’ve outgrown belief in trickle-down?” it asked.
And in truth, if you venture beyond the well-trodden concepts of your bog-standard economic theorists, Marxist or free market, you’ll find a rich vein of ideas and some theories which have already been put into practice in certain places.
We should be bold and explore them: we simply have to find a new path that will ensure that the children of the dump, all children of poverty, get a fair shot at life, a real chance to use their energy and talent and promise for their own good and to the benefit of all of us.
*Mandi Smallhorne is a versatile journalist and editor. Views expressed are her own. Follow her on Twitter.
