Keeping Soshanguve Clean
A community campaign led by Botshilu Private Hospital against illegal dumping and littering, because a clean environment is not a luxury. It is the foundation of a healthy community.
How the Campaign Works
Community Clean-Up Events
Every quarter we mobilise volunteers to clear litter and illegal dumping from the places that carry the greatest health risk: taxi ranks, school surrounds, open veld and informal trading areas.
The Mabopane Station clean-up that followed our launch tackled a severe rodent infestation fed by refuse discarded around the stalls. Alongside removing waste, we work with the City on the practical fixes that keep an area clean once the volunteers have gone home, skip bins, small bins beside stalls and taxis, and formalised collection points.
Schools and Environmental Education
Habits form early, so every campaign cycle begins in a classroom. Learners are taught the direct line between litter, pests and illness, and given a practical role in keeping their own school grounds clean.
The campaign launched at Dithabaneng Primary School and has continued visiting schools across Soshanguve, with the first school visit of 2026 carrying the momentum into the campaign’s second year.
What Happens at a Campaign Day:
- A school session on hygiene, waste and disease prevention
- An organised clean-up at a high-risk public site
- Volunteers drawn from the community, staff and partner organisations
- Engagement with the City on bins, collection points and enforcement
- Awareness messaging carried on social media and local radio
- Follow-up to keep cleared sites from being re-dumped
One Year On:
- A quarterly campaign sustained across a full year since June 2025
- Multiple schools reached with environmental health education
- High-traffic sites cleared, including Mabopane Station
- A standing partnership between the hospital, taxi associations and Ward leadership
- Learners taking environmental responsibility home to their families
A clean environment is not a luxury. It is a fundamental right that shapes health, safety and dignity, and addressing it is as much a part of healthcare as anything we do inside the hospital.
Our Partners, and How You Can Join
No hospital cleans a township on its own. Keeping Soshanguve Clean works because the people who use these spaces every day took ownership of them.
Who Stands With Us:
- Soshanguve Taxi Owners Association and local taxi associations
- Ward 29 leadership under Councillor Thabo Moses Mathibedi
- City of Tshwane, on waste collection and bin infrastructure
- Law enforcement and Social Crime Units
- Schools, community activists and local businesses
How to Get Involved:
- Join a clean-up. Campaign days are announced on our social media pages. Bring gloves and comfortable shoes; we supply the bags.
- Bring the campaign to your school. We are booking school visits for the coming cycles.
- Partner with us. Businesses and organisations can contribute bins, equipment, refreshments or hands on the day.
- Report illegal dumping in your area so it can be added to the next cycle.
What You Can Do Today:
- Use the bins provided at ranks, stalls and stations
- Take food waste home rather than leaving it behind after a journey
- Never dump refuse on open land or in storm-water channels
- Talk to children about why litter makes people ill
- Report dumping hotspots rather than adding to them
Contact the Campaign:
- Telephone: 012 798 7000
- Botshilu Private Hospital, Buitenkant Street, Block IA, Soshanguve
- Follow Botshilu Private Hospital on social media for campaign dates
Every bag of litter removed is one less breeding ground for the illnesses we treat. Keeping Soshanguve Clean is how we take healthcare out of the ward and into the street, and it only works when the community carries it. Join us at the next clean-up.
Why a Hospital Runs a Clean-Up Campaign
Illegal dumping is not only an eyesore. It is a health emergency that arrives at our doors.
Uncollected refuse breeds rodents and flies, contaminates water sources, and creates the conditions in which cholera, typhoid, tuberculosis and respiratory illness spread. Our clinicians see the consequences every week, in patients whose illness began not in their bodies but in their streets.
Treating those patients well is our duty. Preventing them from becoming patients at all is our responsibility to the community we serve.
Patients are brought in with diseases such as cholera and TB, which are directly linked to poor sanitation and hygiene.
Dr Jacky Rampedi, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Botshilu Private Hospital
Keeping Soshanguve Clean launched on World Environment Day, 5 June 2025, at Dithabaneng Primary School, followed by a clean-up at Mabopane Station. It has run quarterly ever since, and marked its first full year in June 2026.