Video: Where is the love?
Fate dealt them a devastating blow, but they triumph over their impoverished circumstances come rain or shine. Their only obstacle is the hate showered on them by the ones living in their ivory towers.
Despite their existence being commensalistic, their quest for survival raises the ire of the advantaged. Yet, the town’s rich are not handicapped by their scavenging, in any way.
We all know them and we’ve all cursed them at one point or another. And, despite our aversion, they won’t be going anywhere anytime soon.
The sad truth is, dogs do more damage than they do. Yet unlike most dogs, for them, its a situation of life or death.
•His name is Matthew Nxumalo. He’s 48-years-old and unemployed. He’s a father two, and his family’s breadwinner. On Tuesdays you’ll see him wandering in the Southern suburbs. Wednesdays he infiltrates Kanonkop alongside hordes of others. He collects the cans we throw away. Matthew earns R11 for one kilogram of compressed aluminium cans. He makes roughly R300 in a good week. For him, and the litany of others in his shoes, it’s a case of the early bird catches the worm. If he’s late, the cans he would have collected, end up in another drifter’s survival bag. Matthew, like the others, avoid making eye contact because of the judgement gleaming from our eyes. Yet he does not deserve it, because he closes our bags, as good as he found them.
•His story resembles Sipho Mkwanazi’s. Sipho was employed as a gardener in Dennesig. He lost his job after a girlfriend accused him of rape. The case was thrown out of court and when he returned to his employer’s home, a replacement was weeding and landscaping and getting his pay. He collects bottles, cans or scrap metals, and earns a measly R40 per day. His prize possession, the trolley he made out of a broken down lawnmower with a discarded suitcase mounted on top. “It makes transportation easier,” Sipho says.
•Meet Piet Motaung, a former excavator operator of Shanduka. Piet was retrenched in 2013, and ever since he has to make a living from scavenging through our trash. His hunting grounds cover Gholfsig and Kanonkop. “You find a lot of cans in these areas,” he says. In a good week he earns R600 over three days of collecting unwanted goods.
•Ronny Mnisi’s story is a heartbreaking truth many of us don’t want to face. Unlike the others, he mainly scavenges for food – “stale bread mostly”. Ronny’s other treasure is clothes – “I can’t buy any”.
He has been on the road for three grueling years. lives in a shack, and breaks down in tears at the show of any kindness – “there’s not a lot of love going around”.
•Enter Thabo Modise, a former rigger and roper retrenched last year. “We understand that people get upset when bags are torn and garbage lay scattered around, and yes, some of us are guilty, but no more than the dogs of the people who hate us”. Thabo is a regular sight in Kanonkop, where he searches for cans and 2l bottles to recycle. He’s seldom alone and is often accompanied by his mom Martha, his three-year-old nephew Malusi, or his own son of approximately two-years. The toddlers enjoy sitting in the shop trolleys the family uses to collect their loot. Thabo’s father walks out ahead of them, scouting the terrain for promising finds.
For the Modise clan, garbage collection is a family affair. “We have to see my sister in Grade 9 through school,” he says. Their family ties are unbreakable. There’s strength in numbers…
The ultimate question is this – In a town where so many things are going so right, how can so many be so despicably wrong, by not giving a damn?
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