Having a working, flushable toilet is something that is often taken for granted with very few of us giving a second thought to the workings of our plumbing, unless of course something is wrong with it.
For nearly 300,000 South Africans however, having a working toilet is nothing but a pipe dream despite the government’s promise to provide them by 2007.
Many South Africans dropped their drawers on the streets of Johannesburg on Wednesday to protest the lack of toilet facilities in their homes, which consists of only a bucket. The protesters, who live in an area of Soweto which previously housed men during the Apartheid period, claimed that their buckets had not been emptied in over 3 months, and proceed to dump the contents of said buckets on the road, proving the point. Others pretended to relieve themselves, perhaps a testament to the lack of decency that their situation forces them to endure.
Police soon arrived on scene and used rubber bullets and tear gas causing the protesters to disperse.
A police spokeswoman, Kay Makhubela told the South African Press Association (Sapa) said:
“They [the protesters] were showing their bums by taking their trousers down on the street… to show their anger with service delivery issues,”
The South African Human Rights Commission described the toilet-buckets as a violation of human rights. In 2013
Last year they declared that an “estimated 16 million people do not have access to adequate sanitation while 3.5 million do not have access to safe drinking water.”
In addition, statistics show that 5.3% of South Africans have no toilets at all, bucket or otherwise.
Wowy! Can’t evening begin to imagine the hellish living condition the citizens are subjected to.
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