By: Zamangiba Zondi

Commuting by public or private transport through the roads of Durban in the morning, has become an unpleasant exercise because of the escalating level of filth on the streets,
especially the Central Business District (CBD).

The question is what is the Durban Solid Waste (DSW) department doing? Are they ignorant to what the rest of the public is seeing? What happened to the good old days when you would
find street sweepers cleaning the streets with vigour and pride? They would whistle a tune while doing their job.

There would also be a sweeper truck that swept the streets at night.

By the time the public woke up in the morning to get to work and the CBD will be fresh, and everyone will start the business of the day with a clean city.

A DSW employee by the name of Sipho Ndlazi (41) said, “I don’t really care about people complaining. At the end of the month I get my salary and I’m happy.”

When asked whether his supervisor goes over their work to check if things have been done properly, he said that sometimes if they are questioned they make an excuse about a lot of
people on the street. Ndlazi said that these people throw their litter on the ground.

“I think the main focus is on the beachfront and the seashore.

There is a tangible contrast between the beach front and the CBD. This makes economic sense as the beach front is a popular tourist destination.

It appears there is a concerted effort to “hide” the filth of the city in plain sight to get the bucks rolling in whist there is decay in the CBD,” said Andile Majola, a community member.

According to Dirtybin.com, Durban’s tourist area has now become one big, filthy, faeces-smeared, littered, broken glass-strewn squatter camp.

Vagrants have taken over the municipal toilets, which were built for the tourist trade.

The water streaming into the ocean is so filthy and polluted with human faeces that Durban has lost its Blue Flag designation.

“I sell fruits for people walking by, they use roads such as Dr A B Xuma, Joe Slovo Street and Anton Lembede Streets, and they are so dirty, it hard for myself to sell by these streets,
but I have no choice,” said Zibuyisile Mangena, a street vendor.

There is also a morning market area where people jump over litter, filth and disgustingly smelling water on a daily basis.

The problem is so severe that almost all the pavements in the CBD are covered in litter and this area is a sight that greets anyone who visits the city in the morning.