Waste Reclaiming in Ekurhuleni : a case study of Holomisa and Villa Lisa informal settlements in South Africa

This paper is about waste reclaiming in the Ekurhuleni Municipality, Gauteng Province, South Africa. It is about the role of informal settlements or shanty towns in waste management, particularly in prolonging the life of a landfill. It documents how government and local community partnerships contribute to waste minimization, in the short term and zero waste management, in the long run. This partnership, it is argued in the paper, contributes also to poverty alleviation for the communities who eke out a living by “working on the dumps”. The argument in the paper is that the Rooikraal example serves as a demonstration project for simple and unsophisticated ways of managing household waste in South Africa and for other major cities in the country, in particular. There is an argument in the literature that marginalized groups still play a limited role in waste management even though they are the main consumers of waste that the richer sections of society generate. This paper concurs with the literature in finding that limited participation cannot be used to give local government the aura of democratic participation. There is a need to recognise the reclaimers as a legitimate constituency in the waste management systems in South Africa.