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.