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.
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