Cars track rotting animal remains into the metro
Buffalo City motorists unknowingly drove through putrid animal remains, flicking it onto their mudguards and tracking hazardous bacteria through the metro.
The Dispatch investigated after fielding a call from an upset member of the public on Friday.
The stinking trail ran from the Highgate subway to the N2 onramp near Cambridge Police Park. All along the 5km stretch of road people recoiled at the stench.
The animal remains appeared to have fallen off the right hand side of truck which drove into East London overnight or at dawn.
The reporter gagged uncontrollably while taking photographs. At the on- and off-ramp to the N2 on Meadow Road the ivorypurple remains were only a metre long and 5cm high, but the stench covered 80m. The road appeared to be stained with the remains for about 15m. The second mess was in Mayfair Avenue, close to the Cambridge Town Hall.
A third patch was under the subway, close to the renovated, multivenue Highgate Hotel.
Smartly dressed barista Ncedisa Mikile, who was working from a coffee van in the parking lot of the Highgate Hotel, grimaced and said the stink was there when she arrived at work.
“One customer said ‘there is something wrong with your dirt bin’, but I said there’s nothing bad in the bin, it comes from there,” she said, pointing to where Voortrekker Road entered the subway.
The Dispatch looked up and saw a stray dog scavenging on the road.
Highgate Hotel manager Gary Ndalelisa said: “I smelt it this morning from the subway to Hemingways.
“Yoh! Such a stink! I looked around for a dead dog.”
The establishment’s day manager, Stanley Geach, said: “That stuff is being picked up by wheels and gets caught under the fenders.”
Municipal workers near Cambridge Police Park said they, too, had caught the whiff.
A vegetable seller at Cambridge Town Hall was irritated about it and a welder at Highgate Hotel said it was dreadful.
One source said they had seen a green tip-truck going past which had the same stench, and the word “compost” on the side. The Dispatch tracked down a company in the Nahoon River valley. Manager Melissa Daniels recoiled at the mention of adding animal entrails to her compost, saying it was strictly 100% organic.
“It would stink. It would attract rodents. It would be unhealthy and it would take forever to break down.”
BCM spokesperson Samkelo Ngwenya did not reply to questions.
‘Yoh! Such a stink! I looked around for a dead dog’