'Holocaust' of plantlife

It is difficult to imagine a time when Johannesburg was a dusty mining camp with barely a tree in sight. The cultivation of trees was critical in the transformation of the city from grassland into living areas.  

“In Johannesburg, one of the most immediate needs was for vegetation, the bare veld being most inhospitable to European eyes, and early photographs show how quickly this desire to ‘humanize’ the landscape was gratified by the planting of rapidly growing trees to line the streets and squares.” (Dennis Radford) 

Seen from space Johannesburg is considered one of the great man-made forests of the earth.

Over the past few years, tree felling has become a micro enterprise. Tree fellers advertise their services on street corners throughout Johannesburg. In the more affluent suburbs, advertising is more sophisticated and so are the tools.

In suburbs closer to the city trees as old as the city itself are being chopped down for firewood, hacked down in backyards because they don’t suit the aesthetics of new occupants, or in some cases poisoned when autumn leaves become an irritation.  

According to City Parks, citizens who cut down trees in the street without permission are liable for a fine but culprits are rarely reported or caught. http://melodyemmettsbezvalley.blogspot.com/2011/08/jesus-went-out-to-mountainside-to-pray.html

http://melodyemmettsbezvalley.blogspot.com/2011/10/once-there-were-two-rivers_14.html

Since the largely Italian and Portuguese property owners have moved out of suburbs like Bez Valley, and young upwardly mobile South Africans and their families, together with unconscionable speculators from other parts of Africa have moved in, the trend has been for cultivated gardens to be uprooted and replaced with concrete.  This is often accompanied by the deployment of large, miserable looking, blatantly neglected dogs to patrol the concrete in small front yards from morning to night.  I have written about these things on this blog. http://melodyemmettsbezvalley.blogspot.com/2011/09/dog-called-police.html

My own garden in Bez Valley has sustained me and shielded me from the often grim realities of life on the streets. In my door-sized front garden, a gooseberry bush, a bay tree, a lemon tree, granadillas and strawberries flourished and extended their generous offerings through the fence to passersby. 

In a small garden at the back of the house I grew vegetables – spinach, onions, tomatoes, beans, peas, and even mielies - interspersed with herbs of every variety, including a comfrey plant that was practically a tree, roses, hydrangeas and several large trees.

Together with my Muslim neighbours, who have a penchant for palm trees (considered a symbol of affluence by some Johannesburg residents), I continued to nurture and tend to my garden whilst gardens all around me were being uprooted and concreted in.

Two weeks ago, after living in Bez Valley for 15 years, I relocated slightly further north, to a flat with a large terrace. I potted some of my plants and moved them together with my large collection of plants and herbs already in pots, to my new home.

I discussed the garden with the new owner of the Bez Valley house, explaining what I would take and what I would leave behind.  There was no argument, in fact she nodded gratefully when I asked if she would like me to leave this or that plant.  Under the circumstances, I mistakenly thought we shared the same ideas. 

On Tuesday I received a late night call from a distraught Katy Mazibuko, who tearfully told me that the new owner had uprooted the entire garden, back and front, and transported it in bakkie loads to the local dump. I phoned another neighbour to get confirmation. “Yes,” she said, “I was very upset to see all the lemons falling down…There is only one tree left in the back. Everything else has gone …”
http://melodyemmettsbezvalley.blogspot.com/2011/08/katy-mazibuko.html

I asked the new owner why she hadn’t let me know. “I would have taken the plants,” I told her. 

“You should have taken what you wanted,” she said. I am not a garden or a flower person…”

For many people, plant growth is merely a hateful excrescence of the earth, a sign of a lazy householder, and the encroachment of the jungle into civilized life.

With a heavy heart I have imagined my trees and plants, their lifeless arms and legs projecting into the air on a dusty city dump site, a ‘holocaust’ of plant life.  

Back to Eden... The Siyakhana Food Gardens

The Siyakhana Food Gardens were established in Bezuidenhout Park in 2005 in a partnership between Wits University and 16 Early Childhood Development and Home-Based Care NGOs.
http://siyakhana-org.win24.wadns.net/WhatWeDo/FoodGarden.aspx


Mandla Tshabalala is the manager. A member of the Seventh Day Adventist Reformed Church and resident caretaker of the church property in 8^th Avenue, Bez Valley, Mandla began as a volunteer when the garden was still a dump site.

His knowledge and his love of gardening come from observing his gardener grandmother as a child; from his training at a permaculture school in the Free State and an eco-village in Germany; from the Bible; and from teachings contained in the book  Back to Eden, claiming that everything that humankind needs for nutrition and healing is provided for naturally.

Quoting from Back to Eden and from the Bible, Mandla talks of a wide variety of herbs that can be used for the healing of boils; cancer, heart conditions, diabetes, stomach complaints, syphilis, blood ailments, sinusitis, and many other illnesses. Herbs grown in the Siyakhana Food Garden  include White Clover, Yarrow, Comfrey, Borage, Feverfew, St. John’s Wort, Sage, Calendula, Roux, Peppermint, Fennel, Lemon grass, Oregano, Plantain, Sage and Marjoram.

The first trees were planted by Trees and Foods for Africa activists in 2005. Today the garden contains an orchard full of fruit bearing apricot, peach, pecan nut, plum, lemon, olive and apple trees, and a food garden that produces a wide variety of vegetables including beans, cabbages, lettuce, tomatoes and spinach. Produce is given to NGO partners in the inner city of Johannesburg.

Dried herbs and a variety of vegetable salts and creams are also on sale to visitors.

Siyakhana has a number of purposes. It is a research site for university students; a permaculture training centre; a site for pionering eco-buildings; and the propagation of plants is important. “Seeds are replanted… Some will be sold to food gardens or NGOs… The idea is to keep the cycle going so that skills are not lost and so we can reach out to others because we now have an abundance of herbs and trees and shrubs,” Mandla says.

There are many visitors to the garden. They come to observe, to learn, to be inspired, and to consult Mandla not only about permaculture gardening but also about healing remedies.  A close neighbour who visits Mandla on a regular basis about growing vegetables and healing herbs, is the man who manages the cleaning of the Jukskei in the Park (see earlier blog, The River Runs Thru).

“Community members consult me about their ailments. People learned about the use of herbs and they came here to get some. I have stopped it because it upset a lot of other things I have do do in the garden, but I still advise people in my personal capacity.”

Fear and the fearless foreigners

A team of traveling ‘eco-mystics’ cycled from Oliver Tambo airport to Rhodes Park on bicycles made from the branches of trees and an assortment of natural materials, which they brought with them on the 'plane from France.  Soon after arriving at the park they set up sleeping arrangements using nets and rope wound round trees beside the lake. 

The group consisting of Mickael (Mika), 12-year old Axel and two women, Laurence (Lo) and Eileen, are from different eco-communities in the south of France, where they live in houses built from bamboo, mud or ancient stone, and grow their own food.

They met at a festival of ‘New Energy’ and three weeks later made the journey together, inspired by a dream in which Mika was told to take a trip to South Africa in September.

Artists, writers, storytellers, healers, they live very simply, close to the Earth, and invite others to travel with them, especially people who are struggling or ill.

After a series of revelations (‘enigma’) over a period of a year, Mika, whose travels include a 13 month journey by bicycle from France to Australia, believes that life on Earth as it exists today will come to an end before long. Indicating with a movement of his hands he says, “The world will turn upside down and the oceans will flood the continents…”

Tony Lopes taught the group how to make a wood gas stove and a local gardener/security guard/Jack of all trades named Albert befriended them and took them to the backroom of the Kensington house where he lives when they were harassed by the police. Albert has no electricity in his room and cooks with paraffin.  He made them a pot of pap and asked them if they wanted him to heat some water for a bath but apparently they said, “We will wait for the rain.”

I was struck by their practicality, their defiance of the conventional, and their absolute trust that they would end up where they were supposed to be. 

We have become accustomed to living in fear in South Africa so this group of people who had no fear brought new hope and energy to the park and to the diverse group of people from the community that felt drawn to them.

They left as unexpectedly as they arrived. Albert gave Tony a note from Mika. It read: “We are headed in the direction of Limpopo.”

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!”

Survival and the city

Just over the Bez Valley border, in a street lined with gum and oak trees, rich with birdlife, women congregate in pairs or small groups on the pavement outside large Observatory properties.  They are aged between 18 and 40 and come from South Africa, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Angola, the DRC, Malawi and Zambia. They live in Observatory, Yeoville, Bellevue East, Bez Valley, Bertrams, Kensington, Orange Grove and Vorna Valley.   

There is a loose affiliation between the women, and a pecking order. South African women get first preference for rooms in a guest house on Louis Botha Avenue, which are rented out at R50 an hour or R30 for half an hour. Clients are “Whites, Indians, Nigerians, all kinds…We don’t know them, we don’t ask questions unless they say they want to spend some life with you or if they propose you. That’s when they will tell you about their history.  Then they will tell you, I come from India, or from London, or from Australia.  Others lie to us.”

The younger women insist on condoms; the older women are more willing to compromise if they are paid enough. Fees range from R100 to R600.  

Younger sex workers are expected to pay compensation - often at knifepoint - if an older woman loses a regular client because of them. Sometimes they are forced to give up all their earnings.

Sibongile is Zimbabwean. Her mother lives in Zimbabwe and her father lives in Johannesburg. Since he married a South African woman, her father has failed to support her. She lives with her stepsisters who don’t know what she does. “They think I am chilling and working at Bruma for those Chinese shops.” She works on Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays and generally has about four clients a day.  

Evidence, also a Zimbabwean, is 18.  She came to South Africa two years ago on her own. Both her parents are dead and she has no family.  “This thing is a risk. I am doing it because of my situation.  Otherwise I must sleep in the streets.”

*Not their real names.

Jo'burg's 'Bridge of San Luis Rey'

The winding road that connects the valley with the top of the ridge is Johannesburg’s ‘Bridge of San Luis Rey’.  


The road was named after Joseph Stewart, a socially concerned and active man who devoted himself to the community for 25 years. The beautiful arched walls, built of stone from the koppie, still exist.  Once there was a plaque marking the outcrop of the ‘Brixton Qaurtzite’ which forms the Observatory Ridge, but it was apparently shot to smithereens by vandals in a passing car during the apartheid era at about the time when David Webster was assassinated.

One story of the origins of Stewart Drive is that it was built by Italian prisoners of war (the 1939-1945 War); another is that it was part of the city engineer’s work programme for the unemployed during the Depression and was completed in 1935.

The road winds its serpentine way through dense gum-tree forests, though the protecting fence has long been dismantled and sold - ‘shipped to China’ as they say at the all-accepting, turn-a-blind-eye scrap dealers in the valley. This is the final destination of almost all the man-hole covers and fence-posts in the district.  Another fence, only partially stolen is the more recent initiative of a local politician. It separates the park at the top of the road from the ‘jungle’ below.

Benches for weary travellers, thoughtfully constructed by the road’s builders at key points on the steep path, have also been stolen. Only one or two concrete legs remain.

Once there was a pedestrian route up the ridge, coming out at the corner of Beatty and Hill streets, but the story goes that long ago, an ‘Italian megalomaniac developer’ filled it in with rubble from the demolished white elephant ,’Von Brandis Garage’ in Jo’burg City, thereby blocking the watercourse and precipitating his bankruptcy (so it is said). Such paths in the city (like the path up Houghton ridge) have, in any event long become too dangerous for walking.

‘Robber-barons’  come down a well-trod path at a lonely dark bend in the forest, from wherever they dwell with impunity (from all accounts), when they see travellers wending their way fearfully upwards. Sometimes, it is said, they place rocks in the road, late at night, to puncture the tyres of cars of unsuspecting travellers.

It’s a quarter of a kilometre of utter lawlessness, a real fairy tale world of bandit kings, a piece of Johannesburg that exists apart. Anyone who takes the time to offer a lift to people waiting fearfully at the top or at the bottom of Stewart Drive will meet all the characters of a modern fairy-tale: Beautiful young maidens; goodly parents shepherding small children to and from the crèche at the bottom of the hill; wise old folk; children like ‘Little Red Riding Hood’ on an errand; two angels from the Celestial Church of Jesus Christ, and a band of pilgrims almost robbed by two leather-jacketed men with guns.

I have met a Franco-African maths teacher on his way to and from a part-time post at the High School  below the imposing stone abandoned Sir Herbert Baker built Observatory , and a tutoring job in the valley; a Congolese former diplomat, Japanese and Spanish-speaking, hoping to go to London; a French teacher; a schoolboy who left his  ragged school blazer in my car (still hanging hopefully in my cupboard); an artisan who lives in a house of safety for people with mental instability; and a young business and family man, on his way to a Hillbrow pharmacy to buy 'family planning items'.

'Don’t stop to give people a lift any more, and keep your doors locked. You may be hijacked!' a local politician, cautioned. 'You can’t trust anybody these days'