Langaville residents take fight for flushing toilets to court

Shack dwellers in Langaville Extension 8, on the outskirts of Johannesburg, are taking their fight for flushing toilets to the court.

They have been using the same interim basic sanitation – in the form of portable chemical toilets – that the City of Ekurhuleni was in 2011 ordered by a court to provide them with, for almost 10 years.

And with the city last year having controversially awarded a new three-year tender for the continued provision of these toilets in informal settlements across the East Rand, including Langaville Extension 8, their situation doesn’t look likely to change any time soon. In the meantime, the shack dwellers say, the toilets – which they have compared to the bucket system – have become a health hazard and a security risk .

“They are filthy, smell and are petri dish for diseases such as diarrhea and cholera,” Makhosini Nhlapo, who has been living in Langaville Extension 8 since 1993, said in papers filed in the High Court in Johannesburg recently.

The papers were filed as part of an application to have the municipality declared in breach of its constitutional obligations and ordered to take measures to “progressively realise the [shack dwellers’] rights to access to adequate housing and basic sanitation”.

The shack dwellers, represented by the University of the Witwatersrand’s Centre for Applied Legal Studies, also want the court to set aside the municipality’s most recent decision to continue using portable chemical toilets in Langaville Extension 8, as well as its refusal to rezone the land – after insisting the shack dwellers were not eligible for flushing toilets because of the zoning.

The chemicals used to sanitise the toilets, Nhlapo also said in the papers, were a health hazard. “Some female residents have experienced rashes … Others experience migraines, while those with pre-existing respiratory illnesses are compromised,” he said.

In addition, he pointed to the fact that the toilets could not be locked from the inside and were not even equipped with lights. “They are dark and pose a security risk even during the day. This is worse at night,” he said. It is understood the city has filed a notice to oppose the application, but no comment had been received at the time of publishing.

– bernadettew@citizen.co.za

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