Protesters blocked the R334 for two days after a shack dweller was killed in a car accident on his way to relieve himself in the bush across the road.
A protest erupted on the busy R334 in Kariega after a 51-year-old shack dweller was killed in a car accident on his way to relieve himself in the bush on Monday morning.
The protest was started on Monday by about 100 people and continued on Tuesday morning. Residents of the informal settlement, in ward 45, have been demanding toilets and houses for a long time. They say they were relocated by the municipality in 2017. Toilets were built for them but no houses; the toilets have since been vandalised and the sewerage system is faulty.
A witness who did not want to be named said: “The speeding vehicle emerged and hit the man down. The driver got out and pleaded with us to understand it was not a deliberate hit. We have lost a hero who died waiting for a toilet to be built by the municipality.”
“We were transported by municipal trucks with our own shacks in 2017,” said protest leader Sinothando Gedze. “But since 2017, we have been living next to leaking toilets.”
Protesters carried placards that read “We are sick and tired” and “We want houses now”. The protesters included parents of children from Noninzi primary school, who were burning tyres, trees and other rubble next to their children.
When police arrived, protester Mziwenkosi Tshanga told them: “We are not going to allow the passing of vehicles on this road. We want something valid from the municipality that states when they are going to build our houses.”
“We also have a bereavement. One of our own died on this road yesterday. We are not happy.”
Gedze said municipal officials did not answer calls. “These toilets we are living next to are decorations. They are not real toilets. The municipality did an assessment two months ago, but they are now playing hide and seek.”
The protesters sang “Asinalo uvalo ngalento siyenzayo” (We are not afraid of what we are doing) and “Amabhula’ amnyama andenzi wari” (Black boers make me worried).
Ward councillor Sabelo Mabuda (ANC) said he would report the death to the council. “If there were flush toilets in the area, the man would have been alive. I have also raised this concern with the municipality and officials.”
GroundUp has sent questions to municipal spokesperson Sithembiso Soyaya. Answers will be added when they are received.
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Reed Lady
Papua New Guinea: You have two cows. One eats the other.
Alpha
The Man who could only Drink Milk
I know an old man who had lived a life full of adventure, but his health started to catch up with him. He\’d run the Boston Marathon, was an avid surfer, and climbed Everest, but he\’d started to have abdominal pains around his 85th birthday and went to see a doctor. Sadly, he ultimately was diagnosed with a rare degenerative liver disease that slowly made him allergic to everything he ate.
He kept copious notes, and as an avid gastronomist slowly grew to despair as everything he\’d spent his life enjoying became something he could no longer eat. Alcohol went first, then mushrooms, then bread, then root vegetables, then coffee, one at a time he had to remove them from his diet. The doctor was clear: if he kept eating something his liver rejected the autoimmune response would be quick and severe, and would lead to a painful death. Little by little, everything was taken away as an option, until the only thing that remained was milk.
In some ways, this actually made life easier, because the mental strain of remembering what he could and couldn\’t eat was gone, but then so was the joy in variety. But he took it in stride, and got his own cow and took classes from a farmer to learn everything he could about the only thing that could give him sustenance. And even within milk, he could still have yogurt, butter, cream, some cheeses, and other milk-derived products he hadn\’t fully rejected yet, so it wasn\’t all bad. But then one day a few months later he felt the pain again, and he knew cow\’s milk was no longer an option.
Lacking other options, he tried goat\’s milk, and he was delighted that it worked! The protein structure is just different enough that his body still tolerated it. That bought him another month. And that\’s when we came up with a wonderful plan to go on one last grand adventure around the world. If he could get one month of life out of the milk of every mammal, he\’d actually have a few more years to enjoy life to the fullest and see the world in all its beauty. Each month, we\’d pick a place with a new mammal, and he would immerse himself fully with the locals, learn all the ways to prepare the milk, and just enjoy the hand he had been dealt as much as he could.
We milked sheep in New Zealand. Camels in Egypt. Zebras in South Africa. Giant bats in Indonesia. Do you know how many Peruvian cuy you need to milk to get a single glass? I do. Even as his health slowly faded, he stayed cheerful, and I felt lucky to join him on the adventure of a lifetime. That brings us to today when he got to the very end of his spreadsheet, and declared that he was now allergic to every mammal. He\’d enjoyed his journey, but his time had come to an end, for there was nothing left to milk.
To which I said nonsense, I bet we can milk a few thousand karma out of this post.