'Bucket system here for decades'

Human Settlements Minister Tokyo Sexwale hopes that the current national sanitation backlog of 2.278-million households will be eradicated by December next year, but critics believe this target is unrealistic and the minister himself has cast doubt upon it.

The government has made repeated promises to eradicate the sanitation backlog, including the infamous bucket system, but these have failed to materialise, resulting in a strong community outcry in several areas.

Now Mr Sexwale admitted, in a written reply to a parliamentary question on Friday, that he did not know when the bucket system would be finally eliminated.

Democratic Alliance human settlements spokesperson Stevens Mokgalapa was adamant that the government was unlikely to meet its latest target in view of the very slow progress made so far, particularly in rural areas.

The Social Justice Coalition also believed that eradicating the sanitation backlog was likely to take many years, "if not decades", and that the minister’s estimate of its size was too conservative.

Missing next year’s deadline would mean a failure to meet the United Nations millennium development goal on sanitation by 2015.

Mr Sexwale said the target "may not be met due to insufficient financial resources and a lack of technical and financial management skills at municipal level".

He attributed the magnitude of the backlog to a number of factors, including an "exceptionally large" backlog that was inherited by the post-1994 government. Further, the number of people per household had declined while the number of households had risen and there had been a rapid rise in informal settlements — particularly in urban areas — as a result of migration from rural areas and of foreigners.

Mr Sexwale said municipalities had not made sufficient allocations for sanitation in their budgets.

Social Justice Coalition deputy general secretary Gavin Silber said the estimated backlog of 2.278-million was conservative "as it assumed that all public toilet facilities installed in informal settlements to date are properly maintained, whereas municipalities across the country are failing to do so. Many toilets have broken down and have not worked for years, while others are very unhygienic and unsafe."

At the current rate of delivery and population growth in informal settlements — in addition to the absence of co-ordinated and coherent informal settlement development plans at local level — it was likely to take many years if not decades to eradicate the backlogs, he said.

"The only way to address this is through a new approach that incorporates meaningful engagement with affected communities, better intergovernmental co-operation, and an acknowledgement that informal settlements are in many cases not ‘temporary’ but permanent communities deserving of quality basic services," Mr Silber said.

Mr Mokgalapa urged the government to consider alternative sanitation systems that were not dependent on water.

- iafrica