Municipal waste failures undermine South Africans' right to a healthy environment, committee told

Daily Maverick

21-05-2025

Municipal failures in waste management are threatening South Africans' constitutional rights to a healthy environment, the parliamentary committee on environment, forestry and fisheries has been told.
Parliamentary briefings from the eThekwini and Nelson Mandela Bay municipalities have revealed persistent illegal dumping, inadequate infrastructure and severe funding shortfalls.
As a result, the parliamentary committee on environment, forestry and fisheries called on Tuesday, 20 May 2025, for urgent oversight and accountability as both cities struggle to implement waste plans and curb rising public dissatisfaction.
Municipal failures in waste management across the country are undermining citizens' constitutional rights to an environment that does not harm their health or wellbeing.
The committee was briefed by the two municipalities on their waste management, including the state of landfill sites. The committee initiated briefings on waste management in various metropolitan municipalities because of rising public dissatisfaction with litter and waste services.
This was because, as stated by committee chairperson Nqabisa Gontsho (ANC), many metropolitan municipalities have integrated waste management plans and bylaws that are not being implemented.
She said this was evident in the persistent illegal dumping, inadequate waste infrastructure, waste fleet management, low waste diversion and slow progress on source separation.
Gontsho said a report by the Auditor-General (AG) had exposed severe failures in waste management, ranging from unregulated landfill sites and settlements built on closed, unrehabilitated landfill sites, to poor fencing or noncompliance with landfill closure norms and standards.
'These municipal failures undermine citizens' constitutional rights to an environment that does not harm their health or wellbeing. To compound the waste management problem, there are weak inspections of landfill sites, with the AG in October last year indicating that the Eastern Cape has the lowest landfill site inspections at only 26%,' said Gontsho.
She said the current state of waste management in the municipalities that the committee had interacted with, including eThekwini and Nelson Mandela Bay, indicated that opportunities for the circular economy and reduction of greenhouse gas emissions were not being used.
The Department of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment (DFFE) and the South African Local Government Association have outlined how they support municipalities in improving waste management, but Gontsho said the outcomes on the ground showed less progress, or regression in some municipalities.
This was why the committee had been calling for these briefings, for stronger oversight and accountability in tackling the growing waste crisis.
Progress and pitfalls in eThekwini's waste management
Waste management challenges identified in eThekwini Municipality. (Source: eThekwini Municipality)
eThekwini Municipality's presentation to the committee painted a picture of a waste management system grappling with chronic challenges, incremental improvements, and an urgent need for systemic reform.
While the municipality had made notable strides (in fleet renewal and operational upgrades), the underlying issues of financial sustainability, infrastructure bottlenecks, governance shortcomings and community resistance threatened the long-term viability of its solid waste services.
Logan Moodley, deputy head of plant and engineering at eThekwini Municipality, said their mandate was to protect the environment and enhance the health of the communities of eThekwini by providing reasonable measures for the prevention of pollution.
With Durban generating about 1.4 million tonnes of solid waste annually and a commendable 95% collection rate, the scale of the operation is undeniable. Yet, Moodley said only 15% of waste was segregated at source, and diversion from landfills remained 'scarce', a glaring deficiency in an era where circular economy principles and landfill minimisation were global best practices.
The city's value chain remains heavily reliant on engineered landfill disposal, with little progress in upstream waste reduction or recycling initiatives.
Moodley said that 'there is still a high dependency in the waste system for the use of landfill sites. Our landfill sites have been consumed by waste coming in, and that is seen from the waste statistics. Essentially, in KZN, eThekwini contributes some 9% of the total that's been recorded.'
Two landfills out of four have been closed, Moodley said.
When addressing its financial position, Moodley said the true cost of waste management outpaced revenue by a staggering 42% each year, a trajectory that was, by the municipality's admission, 'not sustainable'.
Millions are being spent annually, with significant outlays on collection, plant and engineering, and refuse removal contractors.
Despite efforts at cost containment and resource optimisation, the system seems structurally unbalanced, with the absence of alternative revenue streams or effective cost-recovery mechanisms.
Moodley said there had been community protests against waste facility projects; business forums stopped capital projects; waste pickers 'interfere with safe operation of landfill sites'; there were security and enforcement challenges; and transfer stations upgrades/refurbishments were required due to landfill site closures.
'There have been issues of business forums stopping our main Shongweni landfill, and then the semi-closure of two out of the four landfills has created a domino effect of forcing waste to the transfer stations to handle larger volumes,' Moodley said. Without addressing the root causes of resistance, future infrastructure projects were likely to face similar obstacles.
In addition, he said that separation at source was still at a very low level and needed assistance for improvement, meaning diversion from landfill was also 'poor', as Moodley put it.
After analysing the problem, Moodley said they decided to take a 'conscious way forward' by dealing with the easiest things first and the immediate focus areas — such as municipal systems that could ensure that waste was collected on time and taken for safe disposal.
'We are focusing on the easy wins, particularly in gated communities, etc, and bringing that through in our development planning, such that we put through a requirement linked to the development plans, as well as the waste management bylaw that has to separate your waste in two different streams or three different streams,' Moodley said.
The municipality has implemented several short-term interventions, including round balancing of refuse collection, a new fleet management app and upgrades to depots and transfer stations. These have contributed to improved service reliability and operational monitoring.
Looking ahead, the municipality's priorities include a review of its business and financial models, a revamp of informal settlement waste collection, mainstreaming waste diversion and further process optimisation.
But success will depend on overcoming entrenched institutional inertia, securing stable funding and rebuilding trust with affected communities.
Nelson Mandela Bay at a waste management crossroads
Meanwhile, as Nelson Mandela Bay grows and waste volumes increase, the municipality's ability to deliver hinges on overcoming acute operational and financial constraints.
Simthembile Mbande from Nelson Mandela Bay Municipality briefed the committee and said major issues they continued to face were: illegal dumping; the need for more law enforcement and education staff; insufficient budget to replace the municipal waste fleet and comply with landfill regulations; and a lack of funding for refuse receptacles and waste minimisation initiatives.
'The biggest area that we are grappling with is when it comes to illegal dumping. This service is not directly paid for, so whenever someone has, for argument's sake, not woken up in the morning to get their [garbage] collected on the refuse removal day, they can easily dump it, and it becomes a municipal issue now to clean it up,' he said.
What they had proposed as part of refining the municipality's tariff policies, Mbande said, was to find a way to take some sort of funding, 'even if it's nominal, from various households in order to ensure that there is reasonably adequate funding for us to keep our areas clean on a service that is not directly paid for'.
EFF MP Nazier Paulsen commented that the committee should be alarmed that there was little for the directorate in terms of successes – 'it seems like a failed directorate'.
'They don't have money. There's no sign of any money coming into the directorate to address the task of waste management… This is a fairly small municipality, [catering for] 1.4 million compared to eThekwini that was 4.5 million [people]. Yet it struggles in many respects to address a very critical issue of waste management,' said Paulsen.
He said they needed reports from the waste management directorate on what was being done to highlight the resource challenges, both physical and human, that it faced.
'We didn't get any idea as to what sort of programmes are being undertaken to look at or to implement a circular economy,' he said.
The committee proposed rescheduling the response to further address these issues. DM