Cape Argus E-dition

Unlocking the societal compact of trash collectors is key

DR PALI LEHOHLA Dr Lehohla is a Professor of Practice at the University of Johannesburg, a Research Associate at Oxford University and a former Statistician-General of South Africa and former head of Statistics South Africa. Meet him @ Palilj01 and @ www.

SOUTH Africa is a country that displays deep contradictions.

It is one of the top destinations for crime, for gender-based violence and murder.

Daily we witness road rage incidents, which often lead to injury and death. Not to mention the special case of taxis against obviously the rest, yet even there, the trash collectors are spared universal wrath.

Somehow South Africans display an unexplainable peaceful coexistence with trash collectors on the roads amid the mayhem.

Should this give us hope?

In 2015, before he left office, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, left us with a legacy of addressing the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG).

Among these was the goal on environment and a subset of this was the subject of my article, in particular as it relates to South Africa and trash removal and removers.

The task of trash removal and recycling relates to, but is not limited to, seven of the 17 goals.

These are: Goal 6 of Clean Water and Sanitation, Goal 7 of Affordable and Clean Energy, Goal 11 of Sustainable Cities and Communities, Goal 12 of Responsible Consumption and Production, Goal 13 of Climate Change, Goal 14 of Life Below Water, and Goal 15 of Life on Land.

According to the Income and Expenditure Survey of 2011, South African households purchase R37 billion worth of consumables coming in package materials, be it paper, plastic, bottle, wood or metal. These are the materials we throw into our rubbish bins daily.

Meet trash removers on any day. They carefully look into the rubbish bins of the 17 million South African households, selecting all manner of packaging materials like boxes, bottles made of plastic, paper, metal etc that can be sold for recycling.

These get loaded into oversized “sugar” bags, which are usually used for the management of processing sugar cane. These bags are then placed onto some structure with wheels, with a flat wooden bed, pulled by trash collectors.

My recollection of this flat wooden bed on wheels structure is how we graduated from moulding clay cattle, tractors and trailers into constructing these with steering rods similar to the reins for horse riding.

We would push these up the hill and let them roll downhill, enjoying the ride. These structures never lasted that long though.

But the new designs for loading trash are so much more innovative today and their manufacturing is indeed a whole new industry, which evolved in the main from the base of the retail store trolley as the main structure.

Trash collectors increasingly line feeder roads and highways, pulling and pushing these oversized bags, competing peacefully with motorists.

Some of the trash collection personal motorised devices run on the white line, but not once have I experienced an irate motorist slurring a word at these workmen and workwomen as they progress with their daunting daily chores of cleaning the mess behind us.

Earlier, at the height of the bucket system, you dared laugh at the nightsoil man and sing “tshosa uthutha mapakete, dungdundung”.

Tshosa was the name of nightsoil collectors and the rest of the song related to the sound of emptying the bucket. That song from a naughty child would trigger the anger of the nightsoil man, who would place the full bucket on the shiny red stoep or at worst spill the contents of the bucket on the stoep.

Is our collective memory of showing no aggression to these co-road users a fear of the retaliatory conduct of the nightsoil man, or is it the appreciation of the seven goals in which these labouring masses take part?

Whatever the motive of this universal peaceful coexistence on our roads between everyone else and the trash collectors is amid our known violent conduct towards ourselves, remains something of a marvel.

It is something to learn from as we seek to advise ourselves on what the true meaning of a social compact is. There seems to be an unspoken, silent contract, so to say, between the rest of society and trash collectors.

Ban Ki-moon may yet have to unlock the inspiring mystery of these goals.

BUSINESS

en-za

2022-05-15T07:00:00.0000000Z

2022-05-15T07:00:00.0000000Z

http://capeargus.pressreader.com/article/282024740860452

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