SECTION A
HUMAN RIGHTS AND SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY
1) Service delivery (within the context of the local municipal government) is the
provision of goods, amenities and activities considered to be essential and enhance the quality
of life in the local community. Services that the municipality should provide include public
housing, roads, water and sanitation systems, public transport, public drainage and sewage
systems and public safety standards (Ndudula, 2013). Service delivery protests began during
the apartheid era. Protests throughout their history have been carried out in many different
manners, including through police confrontations, toyi-toying, mass meetings, submission of
petitions, stayaways, election boycotts, road blockades, burning of tyres and the destruction
of property and looting (Tshishonga, cited in Reddy and De Vries, 2015). These protests were
the means in which the public displayed their dissatisfaction with the lack of services
provided to them, especially in communities that were neglected under the race-based
structures, with the aim of developing community-based structures and social movements to
oppose the apartheid system. According to SAFTU (2020), after apartheid ended and the
government became an equal and fair democratic system, protests still continued to occur,
mainly to express their need for the improvement of the poor quality of service delivery and
related issues that they faced within the confines of their municipal areas. SAFTU further
explains that the protests appeared to originate in poverty-stricken communities such as
townships and informal settlements rather than the suburbs. The decision of the Mbeki
administration to introduce neo-liberal policies (Mbeki, 2016) made protest action an integral
part of political life during his presidency, as those policies tend to commercialise the basic
needs of people and thus open it up to unfair practices and corruption, which negatively
affects its quality and delivery. The amount of neo-liberal policies also increased during the
Zuma Administration, whose affects trickled down the governmental structures to that of the
municipalities making them less able to provide adequate services, leading to more protests.
Corruption, as defined by the Department of Public Service And Administration (2002) is the
“conduct or behaviour in relation to persons entrusted with responsibilities in public office
and which is aimed at obtaining undue gratification of any kind for themselves or for others”.
Within the scope of local municipalities, corruption includes the offences undertaken by the
municipalities and officials who abuse their authority for illicit benefit or for private gain.
,Common forms of corruption include bribery, extortion, nepotism, patronage, influence
peddling and embezzlement. Corruption has existed since the time of apartheid, through its
intentional exclusion of non-whites and non-Afrikaners from service, government and
political positions (Byrnes, 2015). During apartheid, the leaders of the main opposition party,
the ANC, received funds from donors for the building up of stronger parties to protest the
racist government. The ANC’s rise to power following the 1994 democratic elections brought
along with it an increase in corruption, as the loyalty-based appointment system led to illegal
practices occurring in most government departments, intelligence agencies, the police, and
the military. These practices also affect the local municipalities. The appointment of
municipal officials who inadequately qualified and based on political patronage and nepotism
affects the performance of municipalities (Corruption Watch, 2019). These community
service providers are the sphere in which political patronage has the most disastrous
consequences, especially when it impacts the delivery of essential services. Councillor
Dlamini (as cited in Reddy, 2015) identified the challenges experienced by municipalities as
the result of government corruption, which includes delays due to political interference that
lead to service delivery backlogs, a lack of accountability and poor communication with
community members, illegal political mandates that lead to poor financial management and
the eruption of violent service delivery protests as the result of the inefficiency and detriment
that is the consequence of such behaviour.
My campaign will address these issues by holding the local government structures
responsible for the delivery of services in the community through educating the public on the
duties of the municipality in providing the service of waste collection and management. If
mismanagement occurs through corruption, the municipalities will be reported to the
provincial government, ombudsman or the national government.
2) The right to health – the people that pollute the environment through littering and
dumping of waste, as well as the municipalities that do not properly dispose of waste violate
the right to health of the members of the community. Under this right, the creation of a clean
and safe environment is important to ensure that people do not have their health impacted by
land, water and air pollution, which is what improper waste disposal causes
, The right to an adequate standard of living – this right encompasses access to the necessary
subsistence rights of adequate food, clothing, housing, water and sanitation. The collection
and proper disposal of waste is closely related to sanitation, and thus the lack of service
delivery in waste management is a violation of this human right.
3) The “Waste Not” campaign was designed to address the issue of inadequate waste
collection and mismanagement that affects many living within the Lansdowne community,
along with many other urban and rural communities in South Africa. The campaign seeks to
address the legacy of inadequate waste services and the poorly planned and maintained waste
management infrastructure that threatens the health and well-being of community members
through advancing their constitutional right to a healthy environment and creating awareness
of the role that the private sector should play in reducing their waste production.
The campaign will focus on two important aspects in the addressing of the issue of waste
collection.
The first is the responsibilities of the municipal government to maintain the effective and
efficient delivery of waste services. This will be achieved through communication and
negotiation with the municipality for the implementation of an appropriate waste
management hierarchy and infrastructure with which to minimise dumping and promote the
proper disposal of waste. These include facilities such as material recovery and buy-back
centres, and space for the sorting of waste into re-useable and recyclable waste, which will be
suggested and if feasible implemented under the watch of the campaign. The municipality
will also be tasked with the maintenance and improvement of existing waste management
infrastructure, as reporting of poor service delivery outside of appropriate time-periods will
be undertaken by the campaign through feedback from the public.
Second is the responsibilities of the private sector, with a focus on the household to reduce,
reuse and recycle their waste to minimise dumping and improve the ease of waste collection.
Coordinated awareness programmes will be implemented to ensure that people are aware of
the impact of waste on their health, well-being and the environment. The involvement of the
