Concerns about Inclusive management

Waste pickers in Makhanda have participated in several workshops and seminars at Rhodes University. And through these activities, they approached us for support in the process of organizing themselves as a collective, and the Waste Picker Movement Makhanda was established.

Phillip Nyalungu had several interviews with many waste pickers over the years and engaged with the buy-back centres. We have visited the landfill numerous times for research, organizing and discussing media representation with the waste pickers. We have collaborated with two members of WIEGO. We have engaged with the previous and current site managers. We have engaged with municipal departments. This includes those named in the response to our reporting.

That being said, since 2017, we have seen conditions on the landfill ebb and flow. The private firms change over the years. Municipal officials shuffle. The heaps of waste get scuttled around. The waste pickers remain.

We believe that any decision-making about public services must be participatory and

inclusive of the communities whose lives are directly impacted by the services or systems implemented or the sites occupied. The landfill is no exception.

Participation involves recognizing the communities living on the landfill, as well as

recognition of the informal economy existing in the waste management system. The extreme poverty forces people to become waste pickers and the significant contribution to our society and deserves proper recognition.

This is well addressed in the integration for waste pickers in South Africa report. Our focus is not the current and ongoing disregard they are facing daily at the landfill. Our call is not for donations or ad-hoc feeding schemes but for systemic inclusion. The report explicitly stresses that waste pickers must be included in whatever decision making to do with waste management.

The government has good theoretical policies in place - but unfortunately, they never get implemented until community action is taken.

While several stakeholders were approached to generate our report, we must not digress from our focus in attempts at objectivity. We must consider the imbalance of power of marginalized groups in media representation and within formal knowledge systems.

Feedback from the waste pickers largely informs our reporting.