{"id":250665,"date":"2023-02-21T14:33:45","date_gmt":"2023-02-21T12:33:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/article\/pit-toilets-overflowing-and-filled-with-maggots-as-municipality-fails-to-send-cleaning-truck-for-weeks\/"},"modified":"2023-02-21T14:33:45","modified_gmt":"2023-02-21T12:33:45","slug":"maggots-have-taken-over-the-toilets-in-this-neglected-small-town-in-makana","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/maggots-have-taken-over-the-toilets-in-this-neglected-small-town-in-makana\/","title":{"rendered":"Maggots have taken over the toilets in this neglected small town in Makana"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"article_body\">\n<p><a class=\"bigger-image\" href=\"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/media\/uploads\/images\/photographers\/loyiso_dyongman\/riebeek_east_dirty_toilets.jpg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt src=\"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/02\/maggots-have-taken-over-the-toilets-in-this-neglected-small-town-in-makana.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"caption\">Maggots cover the toilet seat of this pit latrine because the Makana municipality has not sent the truck to homes in Riebeek East to clean them for weeks. Photo: Loyiso Dyongman<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Residents of Riebeek East under the Makana Municipality say the government is neglecting them.<\/li>\n<li>Most of the pit latrines, built during apartheid, are not cleaned regularly.<\/li>\n<li>Most families are forced to relieve themselves in the bush near their homes because their toilets are overflowing and filled with maggots.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The community of Riebeek East say the Makana Municipality is neglecting them by allowing them to live with filthy toilets. They say the municipal honey sucker truck, which empties the pit latrines, does not attend to their homes regularly.<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt class=\"leave\" height=\"1\" id=\"gu_counter\" src=\"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/02\/maggots-have-taken-over-the-toilets-in-this-neglected-small-town-in-makana.gif\" width=\"1\"><\/p>\n<p>When we visited the small town, about 42 kilometres from Makhanda, most of the toilets on people\u2019s properties were full of faeces and stinking. Residents say the municipality has not told them why the truck does not come for weeks at a time.<\/p>\n<p>Eric Mvandaba said, \u201cThese toilets were built during apartheid time. As I\u2019m speaking to you now, last night [20 February] I couldn\u2019t go to the toilet. These are not flushing toilets. We don\u2019t know flush toilets here, we only see them when we go to Makhanda.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOur councillors promise to follow up but nothing happens. This small town is very poor. People are unemployed, poor roads and houses, nothing is good here.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Nomakhaya Gcado said many residents have resorted to relieving themselves in the bush near their homes. \u201cWe can\u2019t even go to the municipal offices to ask questions. We are being left out,\u201d said Gcado.<\/p>\n<p>Siyanda Jokwana lives with his wife and their three children. \u201cSometimes the kids want to go to the toilet at night and there is no other way but to give them a bucket. The toilets are disgusting and have maggots. We feel like we have been forgotten.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Ayanda Mbekela said the smell from the toilets is unbearable. He said it is worst in summer. \u201cI have no choice but to use a bucket when I want to relieve myself at night.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Pensioner Nomakorinte Belewa said she is scared to relieve herself in the bush. \u201cGoing to bushes is risky for us elders, but the situation is forcing us to do that. The municipality should get more trucks that will only focus on the outlying areas,\u201d said Belewa.<\/p>\n<p>Councillor (DA) for the area Carry Clark said outlying communities in the Makana Municipality share a honeysucker which often breaks down. \u201cThis leads to toilets overflowing and that adds to the already unhygienic state of Makana. Another honeysucker should have been prioritised a long time ago. The option of composting toilets should have also been investigated as a viable option, especially with the water situation in the municipality,\u201d said Clark.<\/p>\n<p>Municipal spokesperson Anele Mjekula promised to respond to our questions on 15 February but had not done so by the time of publication.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<div id=\"article_copyright\">\n<p>\u00a9 2023 GroundUp. This article is licensed under a <a href=\"http:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-nd\/4.0\/\" rel=\"license\">Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>You may republish this article, so long as you credit the authors and GroundUp, and do not change the text. Please include a link back to the original article.<\/p>\n<p>We put an invisible pixel in the article so that we can count traffic to republishers. All analytics tools are solely on our servers. We do not give our logs to any third party. Logs are deleted after two weeks. We do not use any IP address identifying information except to count regional traffic. We are solely interested in counting hits, <b>not tracking<\/b> users. If you republish, please do not delete the invisible pixel.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/02\/maggots-have-taken-over-the-toilets-in-this-neglected-small-town-in-makana.jpg\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/\">Source: GroundUp<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Maggots cover the toilet seat of this pit latrine because the Makana municipality has not sent the truck to homes in Riebeek East to clean them for weeks. Photo: Loyiso Dyongman Residents of Riebeek East under the Makana Municipality say the government is neglecting them. Most of the pit latrines, built during apartheid, are not [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":250666,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[9928,3247],"tags":[28001],"class_list":{"0":"post-250665","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-groundup","8":"category-news","9":"tag-groundup","10":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/02\/maggots-have-taken-over-the-toilets-in-this-neglected-small-town-in-makana.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250665","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=250665"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250665\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/250666"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=250665"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=250665"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=250665"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}