15 May 2025

What is the problem?

Mbali Zulu, a community activist and social entrepreneur in Soweto, has led community clean-up initiatives for many years. However, he noticed that the areas he and his community cleaned of litter would become filled with trash again often within days. The issue of illegal dumping in Soweto is also linked to the township’s many other challenges: poverty, unemployment and safety and security issues. 

How are they solving it?

Recognising the need for long-term solutions to Soweto’s challenges, Zulu brought multiple community-based organisations together with an engaged ward councillor to form the Keep Kasi Clean campaign. 

The initiative works to identify and address the causes of illegal dumping in a specific neighbourhood. Keep Kasi Clean then asks residents, “What would you like to see [the dumpsite] become?”

The Keep Kasi Clean campaign is inspired by the success of long-term community transformation efforts. Most notably, Lebo’s Soweto Backpackers worked with the local community to clean up a nearby dump site. Once cleared, they planted trees, set up benches and created a beautiful green park for neighbours and tourists to enjoy. 

With the Keep Kasi Clean campaign, progress is underway in five communities in Soweto to turn illegal dumpsites into positive community spaces – everything from a community garden to a small business hub to an early childhood development centre. The campaign takes actionable steps to both address illegal dumping and help address Soweto’s other problems. 

What’s making it work?

• Building on community assets: Soweto’s strengths – its rich history, the creativity of its people, the township’s arts and music, and the everyday resilient entrepreneurship of its residents – provide a firm foundation for efforts to address its challenges. “This is a vibrant community… the people themselves are the gold of the city,” says Zulu. Highlighting Soweto’s strengths has enabled Zulu and others to attract a growing tourist market and investment, providing much-needed economic stimulus to Soweto and helping build up a sense of community pride for the people who live there. 

• Starting with small steps: Zulu emphasises small everyday actions like disposing of household waste correctly and encourages residents to become responsible citizens. He says, “If you can achieve that – getting rid of litter, making it safe in our community – then we can achieve big things.” 

• Working at the neighbourhood level: Through door-to-door research, Zulu and his team have come to understand why people in each area surrounding a dumpsite leave trash there. Each household and community has different factors that lead them to dump waste. It’s been important to understand neighbourhood-level causes that can help in changing behaviours and setting up new systems for better waste management. 

• Going beyond once-off clean-ups: Working towards “transforming these illegal dumping areas into positive public spaces that will benefit us as a community” has enabled neighbourhoods in Soweto to deal with illegal dumping in a more permanent way than once-off community clean-ups. 

• Collaborating with local government: The Keep Kasi Clean campaign works closely with ward councillor Lefa Molise of Ward 39, Orlando West. Molise has secured community buy-in for Keep Kasi Clean efforts, helped access government resources, communicated with residents, and provided feedback on initiatives.

• Community partnerships: Keep Kasi Clean brings together Jozi My Jozi, the Soweto Rotary Community Corps and several local communities. They also work with Soweto's community policing forums and local government. This collaboration is critical to sharing resources to make their efforts a success.

With every dumpsite they’re turning around, Keep Kasi Clean is transforming Soweto into a thriving community for everyone.  

Acknowledgements

Author: Maru Attwood 

Thanks to Bridget Hilton Barber for a profile on Mbali Zulu in Daily Maverick where fixlocal learned of the Keep Kasi Clean campaign.

Photo: Jozi My Jozi