By Vusumuzi Makwakwa
People from Anzac (Plastic Village) turned the Brakpan dumping site into a source of income spot, they collect plastic and papers to be recycled, some of them sell second hand goods that are collected from the dumping site, to them it’s their daily basis job
We are living a life which is overshadowed by poverty and alarming rates of unemployment, some of us we call it a jungle, because it’s survival of the fittest. We are all fighting to put the food on the table in different ways, others are searching inside the rubbish bins every-day to find something that is valuable and which can be sold. Plastic Village is an informal settlement area located next to the Brakpan dumping site, they named the place plastic village because most of the shacks in that area are covered with plastics to prevent the rain from infiltrating them, the area is over-populated with immigrants.
A 26-year-old man Lucas Mashaba said. “We wake up every-day around 6am in the morning to pack the papers or plastics that we have collected yesterday, so that they can be ready to be taken to be recycled, around 12pm during the day we go back to the dumping site and see what else we can get. We have different types of departments here; some people collect second hand goods and sell them in the street for affordable prices. We are afraid of various diseases, especially now because we are facing COVID-19, but there’s nothing we can do, because this is our only way to survive, we have to send money back home because our children are starving”, he concluded.
