Dead ends

I am back. Have been at a three day conference about investigative reporting. Completely amazing!

Now it's back to reality.

Tomorrow I am filming someone drink from the Jukskei river. They are using a water purifier called Life Straw. I don't know what I am going to say or how I am going to make it interesting. I am a little nervous. Actually, Alistair my group member is doing the filming but I am doing the organising.

I am feeling quite overwhelmed with what I still need to do regarding this project and very worried that my part-time job is taking too much of my time away from this project. But I am glad we don't have to be finished by tomorrow as I had previously thought. This is a wonderful relief ;-)

I am also a little concerned about how government officials are not getting back to me. They ignore emails and won't answer their phone. I am going to have to push harder. A visit to Joburg water is in order.

I have piles of notes from Bruma Lake meetings where the government made promises to do something about the river then it didn't. Now they just won't speak to me. I feel I have hit a dead end.

Paul, the river guardian, made a huge scene at Joburg water to eventually get a meeting with them. He threatened court action.
It seems only then do they respond. He got a meeting.   Oh well, I will keep calling and keep you posted.

Yaaaay for people returning my phone calls

People are really nice. Perhaps not the Joburg city council who don't seem to know how to answer a phone, but everyone else. Contacts that I am tracking down through Google, regarding my Jukskei articles, are returning my emails within an hour or two.

Now if you have worked for Vuvuzela Wits student paper and had to deal with Wits Admin that will not speak to us; and the Wits SRC that takes days to prepare a media statement over some minor issue; and the political groups on Campus that rudely refer to me as Vuvuzela ( I actually do have a name), then working on the Jukskei project is amazing.

People actually cooperate and give me information- I am blown away.

Today I got this call from  man who thought I was a black male called Kagiso- although I think that is a township and I heard him wrong. Anyway I wasn't a black male with a name that sounded like a township, but when the lovely man on the phone was about to hang up he realised he had meant to phone me, but just not at the time he did. It was David Lindley who works for Mondi wetlands and knows about the Edenvale/Linksfield grasslands that I am writing about. So since he accidentally had me on the other end of the line he answered my questions. I only emailed him yesterday at an address I found through googling his name and the word "email".  It worked.
Yaaay for speedy responses!

There are more nice people in the world-  So I phoned an advocate, who is also a labour broker and is friend of my aunt and uncle, but he couldn't help at the time.  A few days later he phoned my aunt and uncle and apologised and told them I should send him an email. Wow!
Wits admin especially SDLU staff ( I won't mention your names but we at Vuvu know who are are) take note!


Compare an apology with say dealing with Wits' Campus Control head's secretary at Wits. Let just say I don't think she knows what the word smile means or what such a thing looks like. ( will I get sued for saying that?)

Wow - I am blown away at being treated with repsect and help. This other lady, PA to the head of the Bruma Lake Owners Association, is taking time out of her Friday to meet with me to look through a few years worth of meeting minutes about Bruma Lake Clean ups just cause I asked.
She doesn't even know me.

And Andrew, the guy who agreed to drink out the river, or as my blog title puts it- sewer- got back to me too. He is going to let us film him using some water purifier to drink from the Jukskei. Now that is product loyalty! Others may call it stupidity.

Yaaaay for nice people and happy blog posts. ;-)

Does the Jo'burg council do anything?

I am happy. I like journalism a lot and I can't express how wonderful it is not to be teaching English anymore (except for excruciating Saturday classes). But journalism is also depressing - I am still happy though.
it's depressing because everyday I learn more about the government not doing their jobs.

Spot the sewerage- Thanks Stevi for the pic!

I am not looking for bad news even though that's what sells- but the more I ask questions about Bruma Lake- the more I hear bad news. And the toilet smell of that lake is proof of how bad things have become.

Head of the Bruma Lake Owners Association Raymond Shapiro remembers the cold winter's night 15 years ago when residents of Kensington and De Wets Hof met in a school hall to discuss the bad water quality of the lake and what to do about it. At that time there were 26000 Ecoli to 1 litre of water. That's the sewerage count in case you wondering. Somewhere around 200 Ecoli to 1 litre is acceptable, according to water scientist Dr Deanne Drake .

At Bruma Lake the Ecoli count is now close to 2,4 million. Nothing the Bruma Lake Owners Association has done to fix the lake over the last 15 years has worked because of lack of cooperation from the Jo'burg Council.
15 years ago they started petitioning the city council to do something about it.


Bruma Lake

They put bacteria into the lake to fix it in 2003 which was a disaster. Jo'burg city council official Rodney Nay promised to come back and drink the water after the good bacteria had eaten all the bad bacteria. Well now Bruma lake is practically sewerage and Rodney has emigrated to Oz.

At one stage nets were put up under the Queen street bridge to catch litter before it entered the lake. But the council didn't empty them often enough so they got full. Then the river would get higher and would wash the nets away. Basically they were not maintained properly by City council and so they couldn't withstand the river after the rains, according to Shapiro.

Currently the lake smells terrible and the sewerage is visible.

Both hotels on the lake stand to lose their world cup soccer teams that they have been allocated. That's a huge loss of business but FIFA won't tolerate putting teams in hotel that stinks from the inside.There is even a sign inside the one hotel that apologises for the smell.

There is disagreement over how to solve the problem of the lake. The Jo'burg city council wants to do an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA). This will take 18 months, meanwhile the World Cup is less than year away.  Paul, river guardian, says the Jo'burg council doesn't need to do an EIA because it is a man made construction and they can apply for permission from the Water Department not to do an EIA. Instead, Paul argues, they should dredge the lake and get rid of all the old raw sewerage filling it up. 
But then there is another problem - where does the sewerage go? It will cost millions to transport it to the only Toxic waste disposal plant in Springs.

The problems are multiple. The causes are too: hijacked buildings in the city centre, sewerage pipes that haven't been maintained, old ones that need to be replaced and a lack of political will to address the problem.
One wonders what the Jo'burg council actually does. They don't answer their phones and when people go there they are all on lunch when it is isn't lunch time.

This grass is growing in Sewerage in an open park

The MD of Jo'burg Water was surprised at the state of the lake when Paul took him there on Monday. How can he not know what is going on? Jo'burg Water is in charge of sewerage and water.He should know and he should also know that Jo'burg water is are doing such a bad job our water is becoming sewerage.

At home with the River Guardian

I wouldn't have thought a week ago that on Saturday, I would be sitting at the dining room table of an eccentric old Afrikaaner man with Alistair and Stevi eating meat that Stevi had braaied.  We went to visit the River Guardian's smallholding, near Muldersdrift, to get some inside info on the man.

Stevi really impressed River Guardian Paul Fairall. She did the braaing while he and Alistair watched. She also made the salad with onions from his garden.  I think Paul had drunk too much whiskey/ whisky ( didn't read the label) by the time the meat was finally put on the braai which was after three. Poor Alistair- he was so hungry having been there since ten. They had been waiting for me to get to there after work, before they had lunch.

As we ate, it was gorgeous to look out of the dining room window and see grasslands and cows and  feel that I had escaped built-up Johannesburg. I had quite a laugh at Paul. He kept calling Stevi, "Kreer" becuase her surname is Kruger? Kreer and Alistair seemed to be enjoying themselves too.

Stevi took this great pic

But I also felt uncomfortable. Almost 70-year-old Paul is lonely and enjoyed entertaining us.   I felt that in one sense like we using him so we could glean more info on the river and so Alistair could get a good profile.

I often feel that as a journalist. When I interviewed sex workers about police abuse, for my feature and radio portfolio, I felt I was going in to Hillbrow, listening to their pain and leaving armed with a strong story. I was gaining from their suffering. With Paul, I felt like we were being friendly to get info on the River Jukskei while he was being genuinely hospitable because he is lonely.

Once we have what we need it is unlikely we will stay in regular contact.

Anyway the day was interesting. Paul has a STAR newspaper poster up on his wall that says: The frog that may stop a highway.  He made it into the paper because he has also been fighting to save some almost -extinct frog, the name of which I can't recall.  Paul says he is known as the frog man. He has a good collection of frog knick-knacks around the house given to him by fellow frog-loving environmentalists.

Anyway he has quite a sense of humour and kept going on about my father being a minister and fighting for the Lord and making other wierd jokes. I got so embarrassed.  He also said some controversial things abour race and the government. At that age people just speak their mind.

Anway Kreer and Alistair and I had a good time in the large almost furnitureless house of the River Guardian. I hope he did too.

Shock and horror at Bruma Lake!!!!

I am going with a Daily Sun-type headline today. I think my story deserves it.

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I have always thought that being a toll road money collector must be the worst job in the world. How boring must it be to sit in alone in a tiny box and have no meaningful interaction with the drivers who hand over money and whizz off? There's not even anything to look at except dull highway and cars.

But there' s an even worse job right on my doorstop. It is being a Bruma Lake cleaner.

The water in the lake comes from the Jukskei river and by the time it reaches Bruma Lake, it is highly polluted with sewerage and trash. Bruma Lake is one part sewerage and two parts water, according to water readings obtained by Jukskei expert, Paul Fairall.

A close up of water in Bruma lake

A hotel facing the smelly lake, employs a lake cleaner to remove dead carcusses and litter from the lake. He peddles a boat around the lake and scoops out what he finds. Fellow cleaners employed by the other lake-facing hotel have found a dead baby before.

It gets worse:

The litter and animal bodies get thrown back into the river at the end of the lake because it is to "hazardous" for the municipality to collect the them, according to the hotel's General Manager.

So the lake cleaner removes the trash so that it is out the hotel guests' eyesight and then it gets thrown back in again, where the lake turns into river. And  so it gets washed away towards Alex.

The lake cleaner deals with dead animals, litter and water filled with sewerage and the hotel he works for has NOT provided him with protective clothing or innoculations.

The lake cleaner wished to stay anonymous. He told me "he had accepted his job privately but not publicly". His need to support his child "drives him to do it" because to date he has found no better employment.  When I asked if he had had Hepatitus B injections or a Tetnus shot he said no.

 I said nothing to the hotel's general manager when I left. I had to bite my tongue and fake a smile.

 I would like to find out if the hotel is in breach of the Occupational Health and Safety act then I will approach them.

Meanwhile a man, who is trying to support his family, is working, unprotected, with what his employer calls "too hazardous" for the municipality to pick up.

The good, the bad and the sewerage

Inspired and freaked out would describe me after today's trip to the Linksfield grasslands near the Jukskei river.

Learning about how much sewerage flows into the stormwater drain ( aka the Jukskei river) and how little the Johannesburg council/municipalities do to stop sewerage spills into the river is depressing. Spending time with a passionate activist was inspiring!

It seems that the Jo'burg municipality does not  maintain anything. Today I saw yet another pipe that leaks sewerage overflow into the Jukskei. The one that did leak sewerage a little futher upstream had been fixed. But another one has broken.

The broken pipe comes from a hospital that has drug resistant TB patients inside. This is a lethal incurable disease. What on earth does the sewerage from the hospital contain? How does it affect the Jukskei?

I also saw stumps of blue gum trees next to the Jukskei. The government's group, "Working for Water" had chopped down these trees next to the river because they were alien. This was in order to save water because alien vegetation uses a lot of water. But this good action (on the surface) has caused problems. The removal of the trees has saved ground water and rain water but this means there is more water in the Jukskei. This intensifies the seasonal flooding of the Jukskei that affects the township of Alex, when the river roars over the shacks built on the river banks.

Alien tree in river

Some alien blue gum trees were also dumped in the river by this do-good government group. These trees add debris into the river which is not good for it or the people upstream.

The good side of today was that my project groupies and I spent an entire day with Marian Laserson, passionate river defender and environmental activist. She is inspiring. Because of her the Edenvale Huddle Park golf course was proved to be a Wetland and saved from property developers. Her activism, and a newspaper that printed her stories, stopped the public owned golf land from being turned into a private development. One woman can make a difference.

The Jukskei river in the grasslands

I will end on that happy note.

My new story idea

I am now exploring the Linksfield grasslands near the Jukskei for another story. 

Marian, Alistair and I in the grasslands

These grasslands lie next to the Jukskei and the Rietfontein hospital, now known as Sizwe hospital. The Jukskei is an important part of the grasslands according to Marian Laserson, an ex-architect passionate about preserving the Jukskei.  Marian has worked with other enthusiastic environmentalists and community members to stop the development of these grasslands.

Marian believes that further property development has been stalled so far because the anti-development group maintain there is grave site under the grasslands, which contains the bodies of anthrax victims. They argue that if developers disturb it, they could unleash a wave of anthrax. Anthrax is a deadly disease carried by spores that can last for centuries.

Gravestones in the Grasslands

The anti-development group also mention in documents that the grasslands cover a smallpox grave. They argue that smallpox will pose a health risk to people if the graves are dug up. There was a smallpox hospital on the site previously.
According to a doctor I spoke to last night, smallpox cannot survive in dead bodies and if the smallpox victims' graves are disturbed, the disease could not be contracted.

However, anthrax could pose a threat, if there really are bodies with anthrax under the grass.

Up to now no new development on the Linksfield grasslands near The Jukskei has taken place. River guardians are pleased.

This is not the only angle to the hospital story.

Near the grasslands there is also a shopping centre with Woolworths as the main tenant. A pipe was built by the shopping centre to move sewerage from the centre to a sewerage works. The pipe crossed the river. I have seen photos of the old concrete pipe. According to Paul, the river broke the pipe and as a result sewerage ran into the river for a long time. After multiple complaints, Paul eventually got whoever was responsible to fix it. He said it took two years.  The pipe was never supposed to be there in the first place.


There also used to be monkeys that lived in the grasslands until a water organisation cut down the alien vegetation. According to Marian, the organisation wanted to stop alien plants, such as blue gum trees, from guzzling excessive amounts of ground water. But the anti-alien vegetation do-gooders stole the monkeys' habitat through their actions.

At face value it is important to save water by reducing the amount of alien vegetation. But when animals lose their habitat it also creates problems.

Do-gooders must think. Solving one problem can cause another.

I can't wait for tomorrow. I will be able to get more details on these stories.

So many stories, so little time

There are so many stories about the river. Today we had a group meeting and listed our story ideas.
I had thought that the Jukskei river was a boring topic. Now I know it is not.

We have enough stories for two months or more.

Here are some of them:
There are rats eating the children of Alex because they breed well in the car wrecks lying in the water.
There are a shortage of toilets in the city so sewerage spews into the river.
There is not proper maintenance of pipes and manholes along the river's course so more sewerage is spewing into the river.
This means Bruma lake is one parts sewerage to two parts water . It stinks so badly that hotels near the river are struggling to keep their businesses running.
There are river guardians who have worked for years to save the river.
And the stories just keep on coming and coming and coming.

I think it is so interesting that a topic, which at first appeared boring has so much to it. How many other stories are out there waiting to be written?

The River Mercenary

“Danger, stormwater drain,” read the sign. Below there was green-brown water and a lot of trash.


“Why do they have to call a life source, a storm water drain?” Paul Fairall gestured at the sign, frustrated. The Jukskei river is not recognised for what it is. It has been canalised into a concrete ripple and labelled: “stormwater drain”.


But the sign was right about one thing. The river is a “Danger”. Not because it has been transferred into a stormwater drain but because of what it contains.

Paul is the river guardian. He works everyday to save the river. He has been at it for 19 years. Today was the day he gave my group and I a tour of the river. We were overwhelmed with the information that we gleaned from the river’s oracle.



The MD of Johannesburg water told Paul that he knows more about the Jukskei than Johannebsurg water officials. This was not only a statement that revealed Pauls’ knowledge and passion for the river but also the government officials’ lack of concern for the Jukskei.



“They don’t walk the lines” complained Paul. Walking the lines refers to checking the manholes for blockages and pipe bursts once a week. It doesn’t happen anymore.

As we travelled from the source along the river, we found sewerage seeping into it at every point possible. Complaints to officials about such things usually go ignored, according to Paul.



Paul told us to never see a thing in isolation. Everything has ramifications and is part of the bigger picture. What happens in the Jukskei affects the woman and children surviving off it 2000 km down the line in Xai Xia, Mozambique. Those woman and children rely on the river. They drink our sewerage.


Paul can look at a plant growing near the river and tell immediately that sewerage has seeped into the ground because of the type of plant growing above it. And from the plant’s appearance he can work out how long the sewerage has been there. Today he pointed out a place in Bez Valley where sewerage had leaked out of a pipe and into the park. The bugweed told him the sewerage leak was 2 years old.


Paul Fairall admitted he gets disheartened. He told me he would go home tonight after our tour through pollution and “have 3 whisky’s too many and then pray for strength”. “I believe in God’s creation. That’s why I am fighting for it. No newspaper will say that because they want to water everything down,” he added. But strength from God helps him to wake up in the morning and continue his war.



Paul has fought in four wars, he told us. He was a mercenary in the Congo and he fought in Zimbabwe and in Angola. He is not proud of those wars. But now he is fighting a fourth war. He is trying to get the government to care about the river.


They don’t.

It would help if they cared about toilets. There is a shortage of 5000- 10000 toilets in the CBD, Paul believes. So sewerage from the hijacked buildings and the thousands of homeless people enters the streets, the drains and then the river.


Our river is a toilet and it runs into the Hartebeestpoort dam. Then it is used to water plants. “Grow your own vegetables,” Paul told us.



It was not an easy river tour. It was not fun, easy or encouraging. Everywhere the river was filthy and smelly.



But I did see two beautiful dogs at the litter catchment. They were carried down the river as puppies and trapped in the grid designed to stop trash. They were rescued by the caretaker of the catchment and now they are beautiful dogs who run around, full of life. They are proof that rescues do happen.

The Jukskei of the past

I am officially a nerd. My group and I stayed so late at Cullen that the librarian had to let us out of the historical archives.  Being locked in the library means I actually have evidence for my new nerd status.

I missed the sunshine these last few days. Archives are pretty dull places fulled with dusty brown clippings from the Star. But I learnt a few things.

The Jukskei used to be called the Yokeskei by some. It was fought over by farmers in court battles sometime in the twenties or thirties.

It was beginning to be polluted in the seventies. I found a photo of a child from Alex sitting on car in the river from a 1971 Star article. The caption read: "A favourite place for African children to bathe and the rotting car hulk makes it just that little bit more interesting for them."

Imagine how interesting that racist author would find the Jukskei now. The river in Alex is fill of trash, dead carcasses, car parts and rats. It is suffering from at least a forty year history of dumping.

In the past the Jukskei of the suburbs wasn't in a good state either. The Star had a photo of the Jukskei in the '80s full of brown water and rubbish. The caption explained that people saw it as a dumping ground. Thirty years later many people see it the same way. 

From my skimming of brown paper clippings it seems that as early as the nineteen twenties, all of Joburg's water came from the Vaal and dams. My guess is that the Jukskei has not served Jo'burg directly for about a hundred years. Perhaps because it has not been used by Johannesburg residents in a real visible way, we have forgotten and polluted the river. 

My groupies are thinking of doing an article on the lack of historical coverage on the Jukskei. They are calling it the forgotten river. I think it should be called the polluted river.

Sadly, the Jukskei runs into rivers that go through four countries, according to River guardian Paul Fairall. Our attitudes towards it and our trash and the pollution have consequences that reach far beyond our borders.

Drowning river

The Jukskei River doesn't look like a river- it looks more like a dumping spot and makeshift sewer.

This is what I learnt yesterday when we went on class riverhunt. The Jukskei is not so easy to find. The source hides under Ellis Park and winds through underground canals. It pops up every now and then before heading back underground. Then the Jukskei hits the township of Alex where it starts drowning in trash.  The smell of sewerage permeates the area.

SOUL, Save our Universal Land, has been working on cleaning the Jukskei for ten years. One wouldn't say so.

The dream of sustainable development, a green river and employed community members is what keeps Kim Kieser, CEO of SOUL, passionate as she gestures at the river. She can see beauty and a flourishing ecosystem where we all see filth and dirt. 

The Jukskei is filled with car parts, tires and trash. This is after year-long cleaning projects.

This made me wonder: What's the point of cleaning the Jukskei again if it will land up filthy: again? But Kim says it has to stay clean, always. And 20 million dollars is what she needs to fix the river, forever. Now that her organisation has been represented at the Clinton Global Initiative she thinks they will get the money.

They plan to employ people to clean the river, monitor it and recycle the trash before it lands back in the river. They have done this before but they want it to be an ongoing project so the river doesn't deteriorate again.  Kim hopes recycling done by the community will raise money to employ people to keep the river clean.

But for now it is filled with rats and rubbish. Children play nearby but not inside. Everybody knows the river is dirty, dangerous and dead. Fish do not swim in it. People don't either.

For the next few weeks our class will find out why The Jukskei has become a dangerous source of pollution, and cholera at times and what it will turn into next.