Shocker: Residents eat among the pigs to survive
Woman at dumping site: We do get sick, but we get very hungry.
Patrick Rugg and Theo Reyneke, two business owners informed the Herald about the extent to which residents and workers at the Randfontein dumping site suffer from hunger.
The Herald went with Rugg to see the conditions in which some people try to make a living.
There are shacks at the entrance of the dumping site right next to endless heaps of rubbish piled up right against the walls of these homes. On entering the dumping site, a young girl was spotted playing among the rubbish while her mother was gathering recyclable materials.
Side by side with the people were countless pigs, searching and grazing their way through the rubble. Just about a metre from them two men were laying on whatever they could find to make themselves comfortable.
The Herald approached Treasure Mokate, 22, who was taking apart a baby car chair. He said, “I gather scrap metal and sell it for a living. I have been doing this for six months. I have no other income.”
Patricia September, 41, from Toekomsrus, said many of the people, including her, eat anything they could find among the rubble.
We do get sick, but we get very hungry. I have qualifications, but there is just no work.”
Rugg told the Herald that earlier that day, he had seen an elderly man chasing a pig with a stick, trying to get the apple the pig was chewing on.
A 22-year-old girl, who wished not to be named, said she did recycling because she could not find other work. Dressed in an old school uniform, she said, “I always wanted to be a social worker”.
When asked if she could be photographed, she said, “Please, no, my parents do not know I work here. They just know I am working.”
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