#KZNHeroes: Cleaners – ‘We just want to look after our beautiful home’

Wanton looting and destruction swept through Durban and KwaZulu-Natal earlier this month, leaving a trail of rack and ruin in its wake. But by this week, much of it had already been cleared thanks to thousands of volunteers coming together to play their part in picking up the pieces.

It all started when Cindy Wadsworth decided to launch the Clean Up Durban group on Facebook last week. She also roped in her friend Katie Pillinger, to help run it.

“We didn’t really know how to help or what we could do. Our husbands and partners were patrolling and we just felt a bit useless,” Pillinger told The Citizen this week.

They never imagined how massive it would become, though.

Overnight, the group had amassed 2000 members. At last count, it had almost 8000.

“It literally just blew up,” Pillinger said.

Over the course of the last two weeks, they have arranged clean-ups in some of the hardest-hit areas in and around Durban including Riverhorse Valley, Westmead, Queen Nandi Drive, Montclair and Newlands West.

On Mandela Day, they arranged one in Cornubia and Pillinger said they had around 4 000 volunteers show up.

“It got incredibly big,” she said – adding that people of “every age, every race, every gender” came out.

“It was amazing. People really wanted to help.”

Going forward, Pillinger and Wadsworth – together with their friend, Michaela Geytenbeek, who they’ve also roped in to help run things now – hope to continue using the Facebook page as a platform from which to run more clean ups, with a focus on beaches and rivers.

“We all just want to look after our beautiful home,” Pillinger said.