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Amnesty International South Africa: Reading This Should Make You Sick
‘Reading this should make you sick’ – this is the message that greeted people in South Africa as they opened the Sunday papers in recent weeks. The bold warning is the headline of a provocative newspaper ad by Amnesty International South Africa in partnership with Joe Public, as part of a campaign petitioning government to eradicate pit toilets in schools by the end of 2024. The ad goes on to explain that it is ‘printed with ink made of human faeces from illegal plain pit toilets still in use at over 3,900 South African schools’. Fortunately for readers, it says, ‘the toxic faecal matter that you are in direct contact with now has been sterilised to kill the pathogens breeding in it’. But perhaps the only thing more sickening than the ad itself, is the truth it uncovers – in that over a million schoolchildren are still exposed to daily physical and health risks due to pit toilets that should have been eradicated in schools, years ago. Plain pit toilets were banned from South African schools by the Minimum Uniform Norms and Standards for Public School Infrastructure (the school infrastructure regulations) in 2013 and had to be removed by 2016. But more than 10 years after these regulations were passed, all of the initial sanitation delivery due dates (2016 and 2020), plus new deadlines, including ones set for the end of February 2023, have been missed as a result of repeatedly being shifted by the Department of Basic Education (DBE). The DBE now plans to eradicate these pit toilets by 2025. However, Amnesty International South Africa is urging the government to stop pushing forward the date and eradicate these illegal pit toilets by the end of 2024.
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