Keith Elliot : The rise of Waste Lords from the ashes of poor service delivery…

Lack of service delivery has spawned a new multi-million illegal industry run by Waste Lords. In this interview, Keith Elliott, the Director of the Kya Sands Burning Wasteland Community Forum, tells Chris Steyn how the illegal waste management industry got off the ground and how the Waste Lords operate. He describes lengthy battles with authorities, as well the current legal battles to try and save communities from the devastating effects. As for the link to corruption, he reveals: “…we’ve been approached by parties in the past. And the approach has been, if you come up with 100,000 Rand, we're quite sure that this problem can go away. So that's an indication at least that at some level, there may be political involvement or people in politics who are involved in this.” Meanwhile, the long-suffering community has managed to raise sufficient money to launch a pilot project for private security to help the authorities with enforcement. “..it is a disgrace that citizens have to resort to the court to get the authorities to do their job, but it's also a disgrace that the citizens have to resort to private security to get the enforcement right,” Elliot says.