Bucket toilets on the way out?

TOWARDS the end of last year, Nelson Mandela Bay mayor Athol Trollip made a commitment that the city would eradicate bucket toilets by the end of 2017.

It not surprising that the pledge was made there, as the municipality has the most bucket toilets in the country, according to data released from Stats SA’S latest Non-financial Census of Municipalities report.

Despite Nelson Mandela Bay making great headway in reducing the number of consumer units using bucket toilets from 21 600 in 2010 to 16 317 in 2016, the system remains an ugly reality for many residents. In May 2016, frustrations over bucket toilets erupted into a violent service delivery protest within the city.

The discontent is understandable: of the 68 028 consumer units in South Africa using a bucket toilet in 2016, 24 percent were located in Nelson Mandela Bay.

Politicians and municipal administrators speak out against bucket toilets; residents despise the system. Yet despite this, 45 of South Africa’s 278 municipalities still provide communities with this form of sanitation. The intention is that bucket toilets are provided as a temporary measure while more permanent sanitation facilities are built.

However, in some cases, lack of funds slows down the process, making it difficult to replace bucket toilets once they’ve been introduced.

The good news is that bucket toilets use has declined across the country in recent years, with municipalities making a concerted effort to provide other options such as ventilated pit toilets, septic tanks and flush toilets.

During 2016, two more municipalities managed to eradicate bucket toilets entirely: Khâi-ma and Siyathemba, both located in the Northern Cape.

In trying to figure out which municipalities struggle the most, it is useful to consider another way of looking at the data. Nelson Mandela Bay might have the highest prevalence of bucket toilets in the country, but it also has one of the largest populations. If the number of consumer units using bucket toilets is expressed as a percentage of total domestic consumer units receiving some form of toilet facility, Nelson Mandela Bay loses its top spot.

Instead, Siyancuma in the Northern Cape comes out on top as the municipality with the highest percentage of domestic consumer units that use bucket toilets, followed by Setsoto and Mafube, both in the Free State.

So will Nelson Mandela Bay keep its promise of totally eradicating bucket toilets by the end of this year?

Stats SA will be your go-to source to answer this question, as the data will appear in its 2017 release of the Non-financial Census of Municipalities report.

Watch this space!