Disposable Cities by Myers Garth Andrew;Boyle Dr. Mark;Mitchell Professor Donald;Pinder Dr. David;

Author:Myers, Garth Andrew;Boyle, Dr. Mark;Mitchell, Professor Donald;Pinder, Dr. David;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Group

Figure 4.4 Municipal Council garbage truck cartoon: The truck has the ZMC name on it – Zanzibar Municipal Council. The character says: ‘Folks, this garbage slips or slides on to the road. Wouldn’t it be better if it were left where it was?’

Source: Zanzibar Leo, August 8, 2003

The endurance of the waste problem completely outstripped the beginning days of the Mkele pilot’s operations in both media and general public attention. The government’s newspaper, Zanzibar Leo – begun under the tutelage of Chief Minister Nahodha a few years ago – turned a contemptuous eye on the Municipal Council at the very moment that one of its own councilors was engaged, through a public-popular partnership, in the potentially prominent Mkele pilot program (Figure 4.4). The Municipality attempted to defend itself by saying it lacked the trucks and the revenue by which to carry out comprehensive solid waste removal (Mussa 2003b). Public sentiment clearly ran against the Municipality, and nowhere more so than in the CUF’s short-lived weekly newspaper, Dira. One of Dira’s brilliantly polemical essayists – one cannot say that Dira was ever actually reporting news – mourned for “our poor city:” walk in it, “and you will see for yourself how the rats dance the rumba and the chachacha while the flies help themselves to their drink and party on in the dumps and drainage ditches full of garbage” (Sanya 2003, p. 9). As the Municipality began to debate its new ideas for bylaws to privatize solid waste collection and to prohibit haphazard construction, Dira responded by stating flatly that

the Municipality has no policies. This is the 39th year after the revolution and the Municipal Council has failed to properly dispose of household waste, let alone feces … Why are we wasting time in seminars discussing the causes of cholera when we have the reasons right in front of us? Today in many areas like Kwamtipura, Tomondo, Magomeni, Chumbuni, and the like [far eastern Ng’ambo and West District squatter areas] it is difficult to provide access to social services given how the houses are sewn together. When a fire happens the fire truck can’t reach, let alone the garbage trucks.

(Shani 2003, p. 2)

The accuracy of Dira’s cleverly spun zingers, and the bated breath with which the public awaited its Friday morning arrival on newsstands across the city, suggest the numerous ways that Zanzibar still falls far short of environmentally sustainable development.

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