Children discarded like the garbage they survive on

Life lesson at a rubbish heap

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Justice Malala: They came out of the rubbish. Heartbreakingly young boys, ten or twelve of them, emerging out of the rank smell and heaps of dirt. They were shirtless and clutching at their belt-less trousers to keep them up. They were dirty, they were hungry, they smelled.

We had spent the weekend at a farm in the Free State. Leaving on Sunday morning, we packed all our rubbish into the back of the car to make sure that it was dumped properly, and sorted and disposed of without harming our earth.

These are, of course, mostly middle-class concerns, even though they should rightly be everyone’s concerns. The earth belongs to all of us, rich, middle class and poor. But the poor here and everywhere have more pressing concerns. They have nothing to eat, let alone having to worry about the disposal of wrappings of foodstuff.

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