News24 | ON THE ROAD | Mkhondo residents grapple with illegal dumping and generally 'f***ed up' town ahead of polls

Rubbish piles in Ethandakukhanya, Mkhondo. (Luke Daniel/News24)

• Mkhondo residents live among piles of rubbish, as illegal dumping is pervasive and the local municipality is seemingly incapable of dealing with refuse removal.
• Road infrastructure is also a problem, and residents say they are looking to vote differently on 29 May, in hopes of a change in their situation.
• In the series On The Road, News24 is traversing the country to gauge South Africans' feelings ahead of the elections.

Easter Saturday in Mkhondo, formerly Piet Retief, means residents are either in church, preparing for a wedding or tending to their businesses.

The streets are quiet, but one family, the Nkonyane family, are cleaning their yard.

A few metres away from their tidy yard, just across the road, is a pile of rubbish in what has become one of several illegal dumping sites in the area.

"If it's like this, then we say it's an improvement. It gets bad," Lina Nkonyane, 74, told News24 about the piles of rubbish a stone's throw away from her yard in the Phoso neighbourhood of Ethandakukhanya, a suburb in Mkhondo.

Her husband, Johann, with a broom in his hand and who was equally as frustrated by the piles of rubbish, said he had given up on reporting the matter to the ward councillor. 

As such, the couple, who have been living in Phoso for more than 25 years, is considering voting differently in the upcoming election.

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The family of six share a dilapidated pit latrine after they were told to pay R2 000 to repair the toilet. They did not have the money, so they left it unrepaired.

Lina said: "We have no hope; we built the toilet in 2017 but nothing has been done to repair it."

"This is an everyday thing. It's very bothersome, we had a fence the government had given us, but they took it and that was a blow because I used to have a vegetable garden. After the fence was stolen, I stopped gardening.

"We were one of the first few people to move here a long time ago, when the township was established.

"What you see now is way better, it looks clean; it sometimes gets bad. We found dead goats and dogs there, people just dump."

She said the Gert Sibande District Municipality occasionally clears out the dump site in front of their home.

"In this house, we always vote, we make sure. But it looks like it's not working out. We might have to change who we vote for. We don't see anything, why are we voting?" she asked.

Also living in the Nkonyanes' yard are Soyiso Dlamini, 28, and Thulani Motha, 37.

"We are suffering here," said Dlamini, adding that residents dump their rubbish next to the street.

Motha had strong words for the municipality, whose existence he wasn't even sure of.

"Piet Retief is f***ed up," he said.

Neither Motha nor Dlamini was expecting the coming elections to change anything.

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A drive through the township reveals several heaps of rubbish among the houses, a reflection of the Auditor-General's report that only 33.8% of residents in Mkhondo received weekly refuse removal in 2022.

According to the DA and AfriForum, the Mkhondo Local Municipality's landfill sites have been in contravention of the National Environmental Waste Act for more than six years.

Goats roam the potholed streets freely.

A resident, Sibongile Fakude, said she was desperate for Ethandakukhanya to finally get a road.

"We need a road here. As things stand, we have to cut across our neighbours' yards to access the main road," Fakude said.

She said she had brought their plight to their ward councillor's attention two weeks ago.

"I'm very excited about the election because we need development in the area. We want roads, we want electricity, we also need the price of food to decrease, everything is expensive," Fakude said.

Asked if she had read or listened to broadcasts around party manifestos, Fakude said: "We can't even listen to broadcasts because when something important will be discussed or [aired], we have load shedding."

She said was also looking to vote for a party that would address the influx of undocumented migrants into South Africa.