The river runs thru

The Jukskei River is said to have got its name from the chance find on its banks of a broken yoke key discarded by Captain Cornwallis, an early traveller and hunter in the area. The Jukskei, which has also been a major actor in the unfolding drama of the  search for gold, is Johannesburg’s largest north-flowing “river”.

The upper reaches of the river were canalised at a time when storm water runoff was seen as an irritation rather than an asset. Although local problems were addressed by the canalisation, the result has been to transfer the problems further downstream.  The momentum and force of a canalised stream together with the increased runoff from the city has created treacherous floodwaters and severe soil erosion.

The ecology of the valley that the river flows through has been radically undermined by the impact of urban development. “Deeply eroded, unstable banks, created by high volumes of high velocity storm water runoff, characterize much of the course downstream.” (Johannesburg City Council,1986. The Mervyn King Ridge Trail).

 

Historical perceptions of water as a means of getting rid of waste play themselves out in the day-to-day experience of Edmond Thokozani Sibisi (Thokozani), who claims descendence from the famous chief, Bambatha. His job is to monitor and clear the waste in a section of the Jukskei on the east side of Bezuidenhout Park (historically a section of Doornfontein farmland).

Chief Bambatha (at the back)

Thokozani comes from Mahlabathini in KwaZulu-Natal (KZN). His wife and children still live there. A migrant worker, he returns home once a year for one month. This year, instead of taking all his leave in December as he usuallly does, he divided the 30 days into two, two-week stretches, and has recently returned from a trip home to perform a traditional ritual for his ancestor who was killed during the ‘Bambatha Rebellion’ (1906). Between 3,000 and 4,000 Zulus were killed during the revolt. One of my ancestors, by tradition, was called up to “quell” it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bambatha_Rebellion

In 1976, Thokozani came to Johannesburg to look for work for the first time. He was employed by a removal company and then as a security guard before giving up hope of sustaining himself in Jo'burg.

After a series of dreams filled with symbols and myths and the whispered utterances of ancestors, and finally a dream involving a struggle underwater with a gigantic serpent, he responded to a calling to become a sangoma and went to Kwambulinga in KZN for training. But shortly after the training began, Thokozani’s trainer demanded R 22,000. He said, “I can’t do that. I am still suffering.” The trainer said, “If you haven’t got money to pay, it is better if you go and find work and if you find money, come back to continue.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sangoma

So he came back to Johannesburg and as it turned out, he found the people in his dream repairing a fence in Bezuidenhout Park and they offered him a job. A man called Ian Dirk was busy cleaning the river and he said, “Come with me. I have got the money to pay you.”

Initially he was taught how to restore the workshop that contains the tools and given a caravan to live in. This was in 2004. “I was watching the place, stopping the people who came to steal. My God helped me to stop those people who came to steal”, he says. That was in 2005.

“Then I was asked to help to reprieve this thing…It is a water litter trap”, he says. A “two hole system” has been constructed to “trap” everything flowing down the Jukskei, including a car, aborted foetuses and even a dead man and a dead baby: “It was a man of age between 38-45…I was crying because it was the first time to see a dead man here…Then there was one small baby. It was a baby that was born but they take out all those eyes… It’s the mother’s people, they do this thing,” he says.

Thokozani lives alone in a converted container in small section of Bezuidenhout Park near to Bruma Lake,  protected by a dog called Minibus. He grows all his own vegetables but there is theft. “It is the community... because there is no fence, they come and take everything without asking….”

 

He has two assistants to help him to clear the waste blocked by the mechanical trap. “We’ve got forks and spades and we load into that big skip, and when it’s full I call the ‘West Giant’ to come and get it".

The daily challenges take their toll. “We find trees and building construction rubbish, and some people make their shit in there. I don’t know if there is no toilet where they stay… Please the people must be stopped to do this. They must keep clean the Bez Valley. Especially that abortion… Tell those people to stop making abortion and throwing those dead babies in the water…Please!”

Tony Lopes

Tony Lopes lived in 10^th Street Bez Valley before moving into a townhouse in Kensington with a small garden which he has transformed into a laboratory of miracles and wonders.
  
Gardener, inventor, conservationist, modern day alchemist and mystic, Tony cooks with solar energy or methane gas produced in an assortment of discarded coffee and paint tins; grows his own vegetables; runs his car on rancid cooking oil, is experimenting with an anaerobic digester; heats his water with a solar geyser made from coke bottles, and recycles just about everything.

An electrical engineer by training, Tony began to change his way of life after reading Einstein; Masanobu Fukuoka, the Japanese farmer/philosopher and author of ‘The One-Straw Revolution’; author and director of ‘Grow Bio intensive Mini-Farming programme for Ecology Action’, John Jeavons; and ‘The Ringing Cedars’ books, which were first published in Russian and then translated into 20 other languages.  The books are a documentary account of a man called Vladimir Megré’s encounters with an extraordinary, almost mythical character known as Anastasia, over a period of 10 years. People from all over the world who have read the books have radically rearranged their lives.

Tony spends hours doing Internet research and then tries out his new inventions, experimenting and learning on his feet.  Each new initiative involves research, networking, and tracking down components for the lowest possible price. It’s hard work. For instance, to collect cow manure, he travelled into a deep rural area where one of the wheels of his vehicle was damaged when it got stuck in the mud.  “Everything has a story to it. Nothing is easy,” he says.

In 2009, Tony built solar cooker using a Masonite wood panel, a wooden frame, galvanized sheeting, and cardboard for insulation.  He uses it to cook rice, potatoes, beans, millet, sorghum, mielie-meal and his own sour-dough bread. It doesn’t work when there is no sun, so he has constructed a wood/gas stove made out of a discarded ‘Ricoffy’ and paint tins, which produces sufficient gas (hydrogen, methane, and carbon monoxide) to cook food. Tony’s experiments with a bio-digester involved purchasing a 1,000 liter water tank for R 500 through Junk Mail. It is filled with water and fresh cow manure, which contains bacteria that creates methane gas, which is used for cooking.  

His solar geyser was modeled on the work of a retired Brazilian mechanic, Jose Alano, using used coke bottles and long life milk/fruit juice tetra pak cartons. It has cut his municipal electricity costs down to R 160 per month.

Discarded vegetable oil, collected from fish and chips shops or catering businesses and more recently from the St Giles Association for the disabled in Kensington, is used to power Tony’s van, according to principles developed by Dr. Rudolf Diesel in 1895.  This involves a two-tank system which allows Tony to start up his vehicle using diesel and then when the engine is hot, to switch over to vegetable oil. “The conversion wasn’t easy,” he says, “So there were school fees…”

In his small garden, Tony grows blueberries, youngberries, sweet peas, cabbages, broad beans, kale, strawberries, parsley, rosemary, tomatoes, and comfrey, in between persimmon, olive, prune,  avocado, peach, fig, apricot, guava, and almond  trees. He also cultivates mushrooms and a variety of medicinal plants.

“I like the science, I like to do the research because of my background as an engineer, but I need to get out into my garden because that is where the divine engineering happens.”

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