Joburg’s dirtiest river may lose its only champion

Words: Sean Christie / GroundUp 

If a tree falls in the forest, does it make a sound? This philosophical cliché seemed to hover over the meeting on 18 August of the Klipriviersberg Sustainability Association (KlipSA) as its chairperson, Andrew Barker, announced that the organisation may have to close.

Unless a professional team can be established to urgently take the association forward, it could close early next year.

Barker explained that KlipSA had been calling for new and younger blood for some time, but the response was limited, making succession planning difficult.

KlipSA, a non-profit organisation, was founded 17 years ago with the stated aim of protecting, promoting and enhancing the value of the natural assets in the south of Johannesburg, including the Klipriviersberg Nature Reserve.

In 2018, when it became clear that the compounding problems afflicting the south-flowing rivers, streams and wetlands in Johannesburg south were particularly urgent and complicated, KlipSA established the Klip River Water Stewardship Initiative (KlipWaS) as an operational arm to focus on improving water quality and flow in the Klip River catchment.

It would be difficult to think of a South African river catchment more in need of champions than that of the Klip River. It doesn’t receive nearly as much attention as its north-flowing counterpart, the Jukskei, but in fact the Klip is the bigger and more historically important river, flowing as it does into the Vaal Barrage, which for decades supplied Johannesburg.

It is also one of the most polluted of Johannesburg’s rivers, running through some of the city’s most populous settlements, notably Soweto.

River guardian

It is through a KlipSA collaboration with the University of Johannesburg’s Process, Energy and Environmental Technology Station (UJ PEETS), that communities living alongside the Klip and its tributaries today have scientific data confirming what they have long suspected: that their waterways are rank, and possibly deadly.

They can use this information to advocate for programmes and interventions to bring about change.

Should KlipSA close, a number of initiatives will simply stop. These include a plan to construct a wetland on the Robinson Canal to help scrub highly contaminated stormwater from the Johannesburg city centre and a project that promotes water stewardship to school kids in Klipspruit, Orlando and surrounds.

KlipSA has been working towards an integrated catchment and urban management plan incorporating large areas of southern Johannesburg, Soweto and the city centre. It may now never see the light of day.

Explaining Klip River’s problems at the meeting, Barker said, ‘The instability and ineffectiveness of the local government turmoil have seen an ongoing decline and a rapidly growing deterioration of our urban environment and its key elements. In addition, the tens of billions of rands in backlogs of maintenance, management and upgrading of essential services infrastructure compound the pressures.‘

It isn’t the job of non-governmental organisations to lead the remediation of Johannesburg’s rivers; it’s the responsibility of the municipality.

Johannesburg Water, said Barker, with its chronic operational instability, high non-revenue water losses, repeated wastewater spills and failures of wastewater treatment works, is a major contributor to the deterioration of local river, stream and wetland systems.

The city’s ongoing water infrastructure crisis has triggered initiatives at different levels of government involving many representatives from different sectors. But any improvement in the condition of Johannesburg’s rivers is years off, and in the absence of organisations that can facilitate community and corporate partnerships, and hold authority to account, there will be little chance for improvement.

This is the value of KlipSA/KlipWaS, and organisations like it. That is what Johannesburg is about to lose.

Barker noted that there is still time in which an individual, or group, may yet step forward with the capacity to take KlipSA/KlipWaS forward.

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Source: GroundUp 

Featured Image:  Johannes Khoele / GroundUp