Dirty Mahalapye

About a year or so ago, I was out walking the dogs west of Mahalapye on the dirt road along the electricity pylons. I found a man driving a front end loader. In the bucket was all sorts of rubbish and he was dumping it in the bush. At the time I'd been concerned because people were dumping rubbish at that spot all of a sudden and it was making the entire area terribly dirty.

I asked the man why he was dumping rubbish in a place that was not a dumping site. He said he worked for the Chinese Contractors building our new police station. He claimed they would dump at this spot and then cover it when they left. I told him still it wasn't okay. No one knows what he's dumping. Things we think are innocuous are actually very harmful to the soil and the water. He didn't like me interfering and became angry.

When I got home I called the Mahalapye Sub-District Council and made a complaint with the environmental officer who picked up the phone. Stupidly I didn't get her name. I thought over time something would happen, but it never did. The Chinese finished and left and the mess remained.

To make matters worse,  people from the village come now and dump rubbish there becasue it looks like a dump. The rubbish blows to the nearby houses and out to the beautiful bush nearby which is now cluttered with plastic bags and other litter.

On Tuesday, again out with the dogs, I found a man dumping rubbish. I told him it was illegal to dump there. He had a vehicle (a white SRX Hilux with a canopy) and could have easily driven to the legal dump not a 5-10 minute drive away. But he was too lazy.

Again I called the council when I got home. I spoke to a woman who made it out that I had made a mistake for not getting the man's plate number. According to her, I should have got his number and then taken it to the police so they could find him and charge him. I asked her why they hadn't gone after the contractors of the police station since they were the ones who started the entire problem. She told me that they were gone now, which of course they are, but they were not when I reported them. I suggested at the least they could put signs to tell people that it is an illegal dump. She said she'd tell her boss.

 There is sadly a very lackadaisical attitude toward waste in the country. I fear these illegal dumping sites will become environmental nightmares in the future. So many things nowadays are about short term gain with no care for the long term effects. I'm scared where this will lead us.

This photo shows the location of the illegal dump behind the police station. That communications tower  is at the new police station

There are many of these loads of building rubble around the site, obviously brought by the front end loader.

These piles of rubbish are everywhere. They look to be household rubbish though some seem to be  from bars since there are many bottles.

The bush west of the site scattered with rubbish blown form the illegal dump.

This is the rubbish that the man I saw on Tuesday left at the illegal dump site