“Minister of Toilets”

Yesterday, November 19, was World Toilet Day, and as New York Times reporter and blogger, Andrew Revkin, reminded his readers (at his excellent Dot World Blog) “… more than a third of the world’s human population has no sanitary place to defecate.” Many of those are in Africa.

Revkin posted a short interview he had with journalist Rose George, who’s written a book on poop called “The Big Necessity: The Unmentionable World of Human Waste and Why it Matters.”

In the interview George gives some love to a number of people, including former South African government minister Ronnie Kasrils (he resigned from the Cabinet when Thabo Mbeki was forced out) who she refers to as South Africa’s onetime “Minister for Toilets.” According to George, Karils “was actually willing to talk publicly about them, unlike most politicians to this day.”

I know what George was trying to praise Kasrils.  But South Africa never had a Minister of Toilets. Kasrils was Minister of Environmental Affairs and Tourism.

I could not help make the connection between “Minister of Toilets” and “toilets in the veld.” Inside South Africa that reminds South Africans of sub-standard state-led housing developments (usually plagued by corrupt practices) for South Africa’s black poor, first under Apartheid and since 1994.

Meanwhile, read Revkin’s interview with Rose George and watch a UNICEF short film on poop here.