In most societies, breaking and entering is a crime of greed. At Mathendele township, it’s a crime of digestion. People aren’t breaking into houses to steal televisions, they’re breaking into pit latrines to answer the most basic of calls. Forget Ocean’s 11; this is Toilets at 12 (midnight), starring ordinary citizens as reluctant burglars of their neighbour’s loos.
It would be funny if it weren’t tragic. Residents of Mathendele, the largest informal settlement near Nhlangano, have endured over 40 years without proper sanitation.
This isn’t about ‘inconvenience’, it’s about a daily battle with dignity. Sneaking into another person’s toilet at night, digging holes in the yard, or relying on a bucket you empty into a stream the next morning, these are not quirky anecdotes; they are the humiliating survival tactics of people abandoned by planning and policy.
One resident, Thembi Mwelase, described life there as a constant clash: ‘toilet burglars’ versus ‘toilet defenders’. Imagine living in a place where your most prized possession isn’t a car, a fridge, or a piece of land, but a pit latrine made from discarded road signs and plastic sacks. This is not development; it’s a national embarrassment.
Yet, the State has been slow to act. Only now do we hear that contractors have been hired to build ventilated improved pit toilets, a project promising 10 000 facilities across rural and peri-urban areas. Ten thousand sounds impressive until you remember that Mathendele alone houses more than 450 households, many with no sanitation whatsoever.
For them, hearing ‘94 toilets have been completed’ is like being told that someone finally invented sliced bread while you’re still chewing dry maize.
Here lies the political rub: sanitation is not just about waste disposal, it’s about power. The placement of toilets, or lack thereof, is as much a statement of who matters as any debate in Parliament. At Mathendele, people pay E5 per trip to use town toilets – that’s E140 a month for a family – essentially a ‘toilet tax’ on the poorest. Meanwhile, budgets are poured into shiny projects elsewhere, while citizens here literally can’t find a dignified place to relieve themselves.
The humour writes itself, but the stench lingers. We laugh at the idea of toilet break-ins because absurdity helps us cope.
But laughter cannot mask the health risks of open defecation, nor the insult of being left behind for decades. It is a bitter joke that the same government urging citizens to wash their hands during cholera outbreaks has not bothered to ensure they have toilets to wash their hands after.
Let’s be clear, a toilet is not a luxury. It is a political declaration that people deserve dignity, health and safety. Until government treats toilets as urgent infrastructure, the residents of Mathendele will remain caught in a tragic comedy where privacy and hygiene are stolen commodities.
What about the rest of us? We should stop laughing long enough to be outraged. Moreover, when people are forced to become ‘toilet burglars’, it’s not just sanitation that has broken down, it’s the social contract itself.
For comments or contributions please contact me on: khulileb.thwala@gmail.com, +268 7938 6923
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