KARABO KGOLENG

It has become a common sight here in Fietas: Malawian women going to a mysterious place down the road towards Annet Road to fetch water in 20 litre buckets and jerry cans. Their little girls with 5 litre bottles. They carry them on their heads up the road, which is uphill, to their homes. The men just chill on the corners and by the spaza shops and the barber and watch them. They are not working. I asked why they are not helping as they won’t be cooking the meals or cleaning or doing laundry or bathing the children. They ignored me. I know that in rural areas there is a division of labour by gender and the men and boys would be out herding or finding work in the farms or factories or in the city. But here, these guys are just chilling. They don’t even sell sim cards or mielies on the street. They seem to think that kind of work is beneath them. Except for braaing meat to sell as street food.

It’s the water thing that really got to me. I had sore shoulders after helping those women. I refill when we have a bit of water. We are going around 3 to 5 days without. Sometimes there is water in the middle of the night so I get up to check and refill. There is so much informality and irregularity here from landlords who are running slum operations to informal dwellers dumping their rubbish in the park because pikitup doesn’t collect outside shack plots. There are plots of land between houses where instead of brick houses, shacks with portaloos have been erected by people needing housing. Pikitup drives past them and only collects where there are pikitup wheelie bins. So they dump their rubbish in the parks and other empty lots and stray dogs pull them apart, exposing soiled nappies and sanitary pads and other items of human waste that recyclers can’t use. Kids end up playing in the street to avoid the rubbish. So between that and lack of water, the place smells worse especially after the rain.

Again, the evidence of the adverse impact of lack of service delivery is the image of a woman and her child carrying water in a world class African city, and her (unrecyclable) pads and the child’s nappies not being disposed of in a hygienic manner.

I have lost faith that urban renewal will happen where poor people live.

The poor and migrant folks here will probably be driven out as demand increases for paid student and worker accommodation. Folks with capital and muscle will come, force them out and build investment properties because it’s easier to move poor people than to move large institutions.

PS.
And right now, we are entering our 5th week without water in the West Rand. Because we are ‘middle’ class, we can hide our shame behind the high wall and use the pool water to flush the loo. The rates bill has gone insane despite our frugality and folks are taking the City Manager to court… enca.com