CASE STUDY: The Umlazi IV Landfill Site

With the dawn of the new democracy in 1994, the school community and by then, a very closely knit South Durban Community Environmental Alliance had seen new hope in identifying a clearly negligent situation against people.
The first letter to the Minister of the Department of Water Affairs and Forestry, Prof Kader Asmal was sent through in mid 1994.  The problem by this time was quite severe with the valley now having risen, resembling a hill. 

This letter outlined the impacts of the site on education.  There was immediate response from the Minister’s office with a site visit arranged for the next day.  Prof Asmal, accompanied by Mr Thamsanqa (Thami) Sokutu visited the site.  Upon alighting from his car at the landfill site, the Minister made observation of the difficulty with his breathing as a result of the air quality of the site.  After deep consultation with the community representatives, the Minister requested that a “Monitoring Committee” be set up to assist in managing the site and mentioned at the meeting that the location of the site in the middle of Umlazi is an apartheid legacy that the new government was aiming to address.  The event was covered widely by the media in Durban.  At least now, the communities felt that there was hope in the new dispensation.  The community, including the school participated in the monitoring committee believing that all that this committee would do was to “sanction the operation” of the landfill even though it was not a legal hazardous site and had poor management record.  This monitoring committee did assist, as it had DWAF attention as soon as there were issues with air quality.  Plainly, the solution to the problem lay somewhere beyond the “managed operation” of the site as there began to be more serious respiratory complaints being documented at the school. 

The school could not operate normally any longer and this was communicated to the Department of Education and a letter sent to the DWAF in which the Minister was alerted to the difficult position of the school, in that education could not happen.  Further to this, the Minister was accused of not acting on the environmental injustice created by the previous government, and perpetuating “environmental racism”. This struck a chord in the Minister. Two or three days after the dispatch of the letter, the Principal, Mr J Ramjeeth and I, Mr Umesh R Bahadur received a call on a morning in February 2007, to present ourselves at the DWAF offices in Durban.  Not knowing what the meeting was about, nor whether it was a routine feedback being given, we made our way to the meeting.  When called into the boardroom, Minister Asmal told us that he was particularly concerned about the Umlazi Landfill issue, and in particular the impacts on the school and the communities around it.  As the Minister of DWAF, he was also concerned with the issue of the need for a home for the hazardous waste that Durban produced.  He felt that, as Minister he is compelled to make a decision and that was to close the Umlazi Landfill site permanently with immediate effect and that the site needed to be rehabilitated forthwith.  He also added that there was no option for another site at that stage, but the decision that he had taken was out of need to allow for people to be afforded their constitutional right.  He did not know where the waste would go, but had taken a decision that he knew was right as Minister.

He then addressed the company concerned and members of the press.  We drove back to school on that day with a new found hope in the new cadre of leadership of the new government. This new leadership, we felt could make decisions with clear vision and reason.  The school continued participating post closure and there were still bouts of odours from the site, but the site was, in principle, closed because it operated negligently and with very dubious beginnings.  Prof Kader Asmal was lauded, by the school and community, not only as an effective minister of DWAF but also as being very sensitive to education and children.  There were other battles in which he was very decisive, like the Mondi issue, but that is a matter of another submission.