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UN report finds ‘environmental racism’ persists in South Africa’s hazardous waste management

UN report finds ‘environmental racism’ persists in South Africa’s hazardous waste management
Ongoing pollution into the Milnerton lagoon and the Diep River over the years has made the lagoon and its surrounding environment effectively dead. (Photo: Kristin Engel)
Kristin Engel
By Kristin Engel
2 Oct 2024
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South Africa recognised the right to a healthy environment 25 years before the UN General Assembly, but outdated laws and a lack of enforcement mean environmental racism persists.

During a Human Rights Council session on 17 September 2024, UN Special Rapporteur Marcos Orellana noted that South Africa still grappled with the “crude legacy of pre-1994 environmental racism” and that this was being exacerbated by outdated laws and inadequate enforcement. 

Orellana referred to systemic discrimination resulting in the disproportionate effect of environmental hazards on marginalised and low-income communities along racial lines – from pervasive air and water pollution to chemical pollution.

environmental racism orellana UN Special Rapporteur Marcos Orellana. (Photo: CIEL / Wikipedia)



Orellana – the UN Special Rapporteur on the implications for human rights of the environmentally sound management and disposal of hazardous substances and wastes – noted the progressive nature of the South African Constitution on human rights.

He said the country’s Constitution recognised the right to a healthy environment 25 years before the UN General Assembly recognised that right in 2022. Nevertheless, environmental racism, rooted in colonialism and apartheid policies, continues to resonate in South Africa today.

Orellana presented his report after visiting SA in 2023 and engaging with several government departments, civil society groups and local communities.

The report, published in July 2024, assessed the country’s efforts to prevent and address the negative impacts of toxic substances on human rights and made recommendations to the South African government. 

environmental racism pesticide Critics suggest that South Africa remains locked in a chemical culture time warp, where pesticides continue to be cast in a ‘heroic' role, discouraging less toxic products and non-chemical weed and insect control alternatives. (Photo: schmidtlaw.com / Wikipedia)



envirommental racism According to the Department of Environmental Affairs, more than 90% of all South Africa's waste is disposed of at landfill sites. (Photo: Ashraf Hendricks)



Orellana said the legislative framework was being severely undermined by a widespread lack of enforcement, owing to limited financial and human resources and the low priority given to environmental offences.

“Further weakening enforcement, postponements of or exemptions from compliance have been extended to powerful corporate actors under the guise of economic development, job creation or security,” he said.

Eskom and Sasol, two of the country’s biggest polluters, have been granted postponements, suspensions and/or alternative limits of the minimum emissions standards since 2015.

Read more: UN expert urges tougher action on pesticides in South Africa

Wasted water


Orellana said oversight authorities had struggled to keep public entities accountable. Non-compliance of wastewater treatment plants and municipalities was a case in point. This was leading to significant water wasted through pipe leaks, non-payment, and not being treated to safe drinking standards in certain areas.

The Department of Water and Sanitation (DWS) has sent non-compliance letters to 90 municipalities and 334 wastewater systems found to be in a critical state and not in compliance with their wastewater licence, asking them to submit corrective plans. Just 168 out of the 334 wastewater systems had submitted plans by March 2023. 

After exhausting administrative enforcement processes, the DWS opened criminal cases against 52 municipalities.

In response to this, the South African government said the DWS, after trying various enforcement methods without success, opened 88 criminal cases against 52 municipalities. Out of 88, five cases were settled through plea sentencing agreements, including one (Govan Mbeki Municipality) that was fined R200-million for polluting the environment and water resources.

The DWS is currently monitoring the implementation of the court cases; 78 cases are still under investigation, including cases awaiting a decision from the National Prosecuting Authority.

The DWS has also obtained five court interdicts against the municipalities and is monitoring the implementation thereof.

These are just a few of the matters highlighted in the report that are having a disproportionate impact on marginalised and low-income communities. 

Coordination challenge


Orellana made several recommendations for the South African government to address these challenges. The country’s delegation said the government would continue to take the steps necessary to implement most of the recommendations by the Special Rapporteur.

One of the underlying problems in enforcing legislation in South Africa, according to Orellana, was that the responsibility for enforcing environmental laws was spread across departments, making coordination a challenge. 

To this end, he recommended that the government clarify overlapping roles and responsibilities of public authorities to ensure accountability and strengthen coordination between public authorities in charge of regulating and enforcing activities involving hazardous substances and wastes.

Orellana also recommended that the government implement targeted measures to combat environmental racism, ensuring that marginalised communities received protection from hazardous substances and had access to a healthy environment.

Contamination of water bodies


“The total ecosystem collapse in the Milnerton Lagoon caused by sewage pollution and the communities’ 10-year struggle for accountability were used as a case study to illustrate the difficulties communities face in claiming this basic human right; this struggle is almost impossible in marginalised communities who are often the worst affected,” Caroline Marx told Daily Maverick.

environmental racism milnerton lagoon Ongoing pollution into the Milnerton lagoon and the Diep River over the years made the lagoon and its surrounding environment effectively dead, largely as a result of the non-compliant discharges from the Potsdam Wastewater Treatment Works (WWTW), 12 December, 2022. (Photo: Kristin Engel)



Marx is the director of RethinkTheStink, a local community NGO borne of the Milnerton community’s battle for authorities to appropriately address the ecological crisis of the Milnerton lagoon in Cape Town, which the City of Cape Town now is actively attempting to restore.

RethinkTheStink now advocates for the human right to clean and safe water enshrined in law by urging better accountability by those responsible for the management of sewage and wastewater, and informing communities about the existence and dangers of contamination of water bodies.

Orellana engaged with RethinkTheStink during his visit to South Africa.

The group submitted a presentation on the dangers of sewage-related pollution in rivers, wetlands, estuaries and oceans, emphasising the risks to human health, the impact on biodiversity and the bioaccumulation of emerging chemicals of concern, pesticides and pharmaceuticals in aquatic biota.

Marx said it was hoped that the Special Rapporteur’s report to the UN Human Rights Council this year and engagements with the government would encourage a sense of urgency, improve accountability and address the lack of political will and/or capacity to resolve sewage pollution of the environment.

Read more: UN representative calls on SA to move beyond harmful apartheid pesticide laws

Leslie Petrik, a professor who specialises in environmental remediation, showed peer-reviewed and published data to Orellana of the bioaccumulation in local marine organisms of numerous sewage-related chemical compounds, among which were pesticides banned elsewhere.  

“We urged the UN rapporteur to highlight the parlous state of SA’s wastewater treatment systems that results in these toxic compounds not being removed during effluent treatment,” Petrik said.

Many communities’ health has been impacted severely by sewage pollution, as has been evident from numerous investigations and reports.

The knock-on effects of sewage pollution include increased disease, unsafe drinking water, increased antimicrobial resistance, destruction of food resources, loss of biodiversity, threats to economic activity and job losses.

Petrik said the government had not yet provided the appropriate regulatory environment, built capacity for the task of addressing environmental toxins, or adequately protected the human right to a safe environment. 

“By highlighting our concerns about the unregulated release of persistent chemical contaminants into our environment, we hope to draw attention to the gaps in regulation and the flagrant disregard by manufacturers of these compounds of their fate and persistence,” she said.

It was also noted by RethinkTheStink that South Africa had excellent environmental laws, but having them enforced was difficult, particularly when the offender was a government department. 

“The ongoing and long-term failure by the South African government to ensure the environmentally sound management and disposal of sewage and its associated toxins threatens the human right to a safe environment, access to safe drinking water, increases the risk of waterborne diseases and damages and destroys ecosystems,” Marx said.

The RethinkTheStink presentation indicated a denial of a basic human right to a safe environment at an international level and appealed to the UN Special Rapporteur for assistance in holding the SA government responsible.

SA’s response


At the UN meeting, Obed Baloyi, the representative from South Africa, shared progress made since the delegation’s previous engagement with the Special Rapporteur in implementing the country’s international obligations.

Baloyi said that the phase-out of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCB) was progressing well, as required by the Stockholm Convention. Eskom had now completely phased out PCBs and the government at the national level was helping municipalities with their phase-out.

In South Africa, PCBs were imported primarily for use in the energy sector in electricity generation and distribution. While no longer allowed to be produced, PCBs are still found everywhere and can cause serious health effects in humans and wildlife. 

Orellana said that despite the country’s measures and progress to phase out PCBs, several challenges to their effective implementation persisted. 

“Only five out of the 174 municipalities licensed by the National Energy Regulator of South Africa to oversee their own transmission and distribution facilities have submitted phase-out plans, due to inadequate financial and technical capacities,” Orellana said.

Despite some efforts to raise awareness of the management of PCBs in South Africa, many provincial and municipal officials, as well as the general public, remain unaware of their adverse effects.

As a result, Orellana found there were cases of cross-contamination, leakage of transformers and run-off contamination at most substations. He also received reports of PCB-contaminated oil used as medicinal treatments.

On the country’s overcapacity and crumbling wastewater treatment works,  Baloyi said that projects to increase the capacity of the major treatment works, including that in Emfuleni Local Municipality, were in the procurement phase.

“As part of our commitment to improving the management of hazardous substances and upholding all human rights without discrimination, South Africa will continue to take the steps necessary to implement most of the recommendations by the Special Rapporteur,” Baloyi said. DM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=REeWvTRUpMk

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