More than a million South Africans live with the daily indignity of a bucket toilet after three decades of democracy, with costly government programmes to eradicate the inhumane reality amounting to nought.   

Census data released this week paints a grim picture – that 2.1% of the 17.8-million South African households rely on buckets as their main ablution facility.  

This is the daily actuality – marked by the acrid stench of human waste – for nearly 375 000 homes, according to the data.  

Experts told News24 that bucket toilets, pit latrines and so-called "VIP" chemical toilets fell foul of the Bill of Rights, infringed on people's dignity, and revealed poor governance and broken promises.  

The data – among a range of metrics used to measure redress of social inequality and poverty, codified by the National Development Plan (NDP) – is a bleak indictment of the state’s performance in restoring dignity to those who have suffered under the legacy of apartheid.  

Gloomier still is that with the population rising to 62 million, and so too a growth in the number of households, the proportion of those subjected to dangerously unhygienic conditions has remained the same between the last Census in 2011 and now. 

Data shows that, on average, a household comprises of 3.5 people. 

57-year-old Ursula Buys, who has lived in Kliptown near central Johannesburg all her life, uses a bucket in her shack to relieve herself. Because she is blind, she cannot walk to nearby "VIP toilets", a euphemism for a pit latrine or portable chemical toilet, just with a ventilation duct.   

"I have to use a bucket or call someone to help me, she told News24 on Thursday, from her ramshackle home. When there is no one to guide her, she sits in close proximity to the festering bucket until a relative visits to empty it.  

Her home is a stone's throw from where the Congress of the People gathered in 1955 to adopt the Freedom Charter, which contains a vision for a just South Africa.  

The Charter reads: "Slums shall be demolished, and new suburbs built where all have transport, roads, lighting, playing fields, creches and social centres."

Buys’ friend, 65-year-old Irene Mazibuko, is her eyes on their trips to the ablutions. 

Neither have ever lived in a home with a flushing toilet. 

"It breaks my heart," Mazibuko said. "It doesn’t matter who is the leader [of the country]; nothing has changed. We were supposed to have happiness post-1994. All we have is darkness, suffering and pain." 

The Census data lists the percentage of households which use the following ablutions:

• Flushing toilets: 70.8% of households (includes flushing toilets connected to public sewerage system and septic tank)
• Chemical toilet: 2.6%
• Pit latrine with VIP: 9.4% (ventilated improved pit toilets have a vent pipe to reduce flies)
• Pit latrine without ventilation pipe: 12.5%
• Bucket toilet: 2.1%
• None: 1.6%
• Other: 1% (this includes ecological or composting toilets) 

The bucket toilet calculation includes buckets collected by municipalities and bucket toilets emptied by the household. 

The Northern Cape recorded the highest number of households using buckets, with 4.5% using this type of toilet. The Free State comes in second with 3.5%, followed by the Western Cape with 3.1%. 

Limpopo has the lowest number of flushing toilets, with 35.2% of the households using this as their primary facility. This province's main type of facility is the VIP pit latrine. 

Gauteng is fourth on the bucket list with 2.5%.  

These figures – as well as the lived experience of Buys – is compelling after the Johannesburg City Council's internal fight over the existence of bucket toilets. 

In August, the council adopted a motion to eradicate pit latrines within the financial year. It was the third time the motion came to council, as it was previously rejected twice because the motion called for the eradication of "bucket toilets". 

The Government of Local Unity - the name given to the ANC/EFF/Patriotic Alliance coalition - voted against the initial motion because it said "there was no such thing" as bucket toilets. 

City of Johannesburg spokesperson Nthatisi Modingoane said: "The city does [not] have a bucket toilet system in place.  

In addition to Kliptown, Eldorado Park, Orange Farm and Alexandra all purportedly have residents who use bucket toilets. In January, News24 visited the Diepkloof hostel where over 7 000 residents were sharing 70 bucket toilets. 

Children have died using these facilities. 

In January 2014, Michael Komape, 5, drowned at the bottom of a pit latrine at his preschool in Chebeng village in Limpopo. 

In March 2018, Lumka Mkhethwa, 5, drowned in a latrine at his primary school in Bizana in the Eastern Cape. 

A 2018 national audit found that 3 898 schools only had pit latrines for ablutions. 

A 10-year review report of the NDP, launched in 2012 to ensure the government used its policies to drive societal change, showed that policy incongruity and corruption have meant that targets and progress were headed in the wrong direction. 

A recent review of the NDP warned that things were looking worse in dealing with poverty, unemployment, and inequality. 

Professor Pundy Pillay, of the Wits School of Governance, said the state has struggled to keep up with migration and the rapid growth of informal settlements. 

He said while the rate of urbanisation in the country was high, that was no excuse for the government to fail to provide some essential services, like proper sanitation.

"It's unforgivable that we still have a bucket system. There's a lack of commitment to address the needs of the poor in a way that justice and fairness would demand," he said.

Pillay said South Africa was not a big country geographically, and if there was the necessary political commitment, the issue of providing proper sanitation would be resolved. 

Constitutional law expert, advocate Paul Hoffman, said our Bill of Rights ensured that everybody had a right to human dignity, and it was no way dignified for someone to sit on a bucket as a toilet.

“Your inherent human dignity is affected. It also talks about a right to bodily and psychological integrity, which is threatened or infringed when you are, on a daily basis, having to put up with the inhumanity a bucket toilet brings with it,” he said.  

“Bucket toilets should not exist,” he added. 

Hoffman held that an “incompetent government does not make effective use of resources as they are required to do by the Constitution. People who are properly qualified do not have the jobs that matter.”

Julius Kleynhans, executive manager at the Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse's social innovation division, said bucket toilets should be a thing of the past, despite rapid urbanisation.  

"Unfortunately, the government hasn't executed programmes well enough, and corruption and maladministration have also played a big role.”  

While there has been an increase in the percentage of households that use a flush toilet, many have been left behind.