A youth group invited The Standard to cover its clean-up campaign held yesterday. It said in its invitation letter that the event was in commemoration of the International Day of Peace.
It dubbed its clean up, “Smart youth, smart environment.” The invite even had a programme attached; they would clean-up the Copacabana bus terminus between 10.30 and 1200 and then go to the Fourth Street bus terminus and do the same. There was even time for speeches and an invited guest of honour!
This is commendable as it shows that the youths understand the importance of a clean environment. But the model is problematic; it is publicity-seeking, unsustainable and therefore ineffective.
Last week I criticised ministers who don clean dustcoats and join such groups to lend them credibility and then retreat to their offices and wait for another chance to demonstrate just how passionate they are about a clean environment.
Interestingly, these sham clean-up operations are always done at these two places: Copacabana and Fourth Street bus terminuses. Obviously that is meant for the groups to gain maximum publicity.
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Our sister paper, NewsDay earlier in the week had carried a story on how some residents of Chisipite — housewives, gardeners and volunteers — had bunched up together and cleaned their area. One of them was quoted saying, “We’re the people who stay here and it should be our responsibility to clean up our place. It’s our Zimbabwe and our responsibility so we should stop being cry-babies and act to clean our place. City council should come at a later stage to collect rubbish from our bins and not to pick up the litter for us.”
Were they also seeking publicity? Maybe, maybe not, but this is the kind of model I am advocating! For starters, clean the area where you live; all the better if you do it anonymously. It’s much like the way you clean your bedroom; we know you do it but the world doesn’t have to shake your hand for it. Cleaning must be a natural process that all should take for granted.
If we were to follow the youths who cleaned the bus terminuses yesterday to their residential areas we were probably going to get the shock of our lives. Go to any shopping centre in the suburbs, both high and low density and you will get what I mean. A typical shopping centre in the high-density suburbs comprises a supermarket or two, several bottles stores, several butcheries and barbecue places. You also have people cooking food on open fires and selling it to revellers who eat the food in the open.
But something is always amiss: there are no usable public toilets at the shops! There are no bins in the vicinity. So what do drinkers do? They buy their canned beer in the bottle stores and when they are finished with them just dump them on the ground. Bottle tops have now formed carpets on the pavements. And most disgustingly, the drinkers urinate anywhere they please. The result is that the whole shopping centre stinks of urine. Those who cook the food and those who eat it seem not to be bothered at all!
The paint is peeling off the buildings because of the urine. In the dark, the drinkers don’t even bother to pee against the walls; they do it wherever they are. In the end cleaning up the place becomes impossible; who would want to pick up urine-soaked litter?
It is these same youths who after abusing their areas of residence come into town to clean Copacabana bus terminus and have their hands shaken by the minister or the mayor! It’s a sign of a warped mindset.
But how do we change this mindset? Change should begin in the mind of every individual. Personal hygiene which must be considered sacrosanct should be extended to the environment. One cannot claim to be clean while living in dirty surroundings. It’s simply not logical. Once each individual is aware of the importance of their own cleanliness the rest follows.
This implies a kind of self-policing in which each individual castigates himself/herself for defiling the environment. The next step after this naturally would be policing everyone else around us. If a person throws a burger box on the street everyone should be able to stop him or her and tell them to do the right thing.
All this works perfectly if local authorities also play their part by providing bins and all other facilities that go with cleanliness. My office is at No.1 Kwame Nkrumah; one day I took a walk from there right to the end in Enterprise Road. The bins are placed too far apart. In Rwandan cities there must be a bin every five metres.
None of the businesses in Kwame Nkrumah, or anywhere else in the city for that matter, has thought of placing bins outside their doors. What happened to the concept of business leading communities?
It is disheartening that local authorities have cast away the rule of law; city bylaws are no longer being enforced. There are no fines for littering; if they indeed are they are not seen to be there. When was the last time anyone was fined for littering?
And why do local authorities allow revellers to drink at shopping centres when they should buy their drinks from bottle stores and take them home to drink? Interestingly at every shopping centre there are usually licensed night clubs and sports bars that provide all requisite facilities, but because of non-enforcement of bylaws drinkers shun these preferring the cheaper bottle stores. Not only does this impact negatively on the environment but it also affects legitimate business.
Most of the litter we see on our streets and highways is thrown out of commuter omnibuses. Two things can be done about this. First, buses should be forced to carry signage that says: “Please don’t throw litter out the window”. Second, each bus must be forced to have a bin of a reasonable size inside it, clearly labelled “Litter”. This is not a new concept; I remember when I was a schoolboy, every bus had this.
What if, for a change, the notorious minibus drivers and touts took a lead in this?What if, as in Rwanda, people are encouraged to take day-offs to pick up litter in their cities? For this, Kigali is considered the cleanest city in Africa.
BY NEVANJI MADANHIRE
