A brawl between waste pickers in Karee Street, Kanonkop, left one man injured this morning after an altercation over refuse bins. Children walking in groups and the noise of trolley wheels can be heard from 04:00, when Middelburg’s recyclers earn their bread and butter for the day.

However, it is a competitive industry where people have to fight for waste for their daily needs.
Apart from groups of children as young as nine years old, whole families walk and scratch in the green bins on garbage collection days to recycle food waste, cans and paper. A fierce duel over a bin erupted in Kanonkop earlier today.

Two recyclers jumped on each other during an escalating altercation, during which one of them was hit on the head with a stone. “It looked like a massacre; the man was bleeding badly from his head,” said Arthur Hill of Dagpatrollie, who intervened to defuse the situation.

One of the recyclers also started throwing rubbish around Karee Street in anger. “You don’t cause trouble in the streets, and you must clean up where you have littered,” Hill said when he reprimanded the fighters. Community members praised Dagpatrollie for its quick response.

Previous violence in Oos Street

Residents of Oos Street previously had to stop a partially unclothed man from strangling a recycler a few months ago. According to eyewitnesses, the fight broke out after the man, who had only a shirt tied around his waist, attacked the recycler without provocation.

The victim was taking cans out of a resident’s bin when he was attacked. The attacker pinned the recycler to a lawn during the struggle. Bystanders called for help from Community Policing Forum groups.
The man let the recycler go after residents intervened.