We come a long way since we first started reporting about the raw sewerage that was flowing into the Walter Sisulu National Botanical Gardens. Sewerage leeks are inevitable in our aging sewer system and yet here we are, with the cleanest river in Gauteng. What are we doing to get here within 2 and a half short years?
Well we have put in place an early warning system which measures the oxygen levels in the Bot Gardens, and we have a myriad of volunteers from both the Roodekrans Neighbourhood Watch and the Kenmare Kloof Conservation Association who actively seek out any leaks, which gets reported onto a WhatsApp group which has all the players who can spring into action to fix the problems. Thanks to Mogale City and to the City of Joburg who have representatives on the group who get things done, and not to leave out any of the other good people of that group. Thank you.
This afternoon I got a call from one of the Roodekrans Neighbourhood Watch members that they were told of a sewerage leak just above the gorge by the caretaker of the Manie Mulder Resort. So my son and I went looking for the leak and it didn't take long to discover the raw sewerage flowing into the stream in Breaunanda just upsteam from what is known as the deepest gorge in Gauteng.
Not long after posting a pin location of the leak onto the WhatsApp group, the local ward councillor for the area, Dr Andries Eksteen, phoned me. I know that Mogale City is on skeleton staff due to the summer holidays, but lets hope that it gets sorted out quickly.
Well we were invited to share the day with Peter to celebrate his 40th birthday which was actually few days back, but anything to enjoy the beautiful warm Spring day at the Botanical Gardens. Peter even got a World's Greatest 40 year old certificate to prove that he is now 40 years old.
The certificate is to prove that he is frankly flippin' fabulous and quite fantastic too. No one else does forty quite as well as Peter. Nah, he can't be forty, that's just a huge outrage. We all think he is 10 years younger and just lied about his age.
A 166 runners turned up this morning for the 1st Black Eagle Mountain Run all in aid of supporting the resident Black Eagles whose juvenile fledged last Wednesday. The organisers are aiming that this race to be the toughest trail run in Gauteng, and from the looks of the runners as they returned, it sure must be one tough run up and down the Sugarbush Ridge.
After yesterday's traffic, it was a relief to sitting in a meeting room with a view like this. This morning I had a meeting with Andrew from the South African National Botanical Gardens, Bill from the Wild Orchids of South Africa, Belinda from the Proteadal Conservation Association, Johann from the Black Eagles Project, Tony an ecologist, and Dawid a photographer, and this was our view.
Nice to have all this beauty right slap in the middle of urban sprawl.
Our most southerly city Cape Town, is sitting on the edge of disaster, by being the first major city to reach Day Zero for having no water, well not quite the first major city as I remember Gaborone, the capital of Botswana, a few times running out of water. With the City of Cape Town declaring Level 6B Water restrictions after consecutive years of drought in the region, another city Port Elizabeth is not far behind. Didn't someone predict that the next major war will be over water?
Although we are having rain in Johannesburg where I live, we are sitting on Level 1 Water Restrictions and hopefully we won't get as bad as where Cape Town is today, there by the grace of God go I. Let it rain, let it rain.
Anyway why is my post about Day Zero? Well I had a board meeting this morning at the Walter Sisulu National Botanical Gardens, and afterwards I took a stroll up to the waterfall and took a few photos of the Witpoortjie waterfall for ARMOUR, the group Action for Responsible Management of Our Rivers, as they requested some from me a few weeks back. It got me thinking, it is raining now and it seems that we have plenty of water but what are we doing to save water? For example not even 6 months back there was raw sewerage flowing down this very waterfall. How quickly can things change. We are living in this false bubble where we believe that it can't happen to us.
In all the toilets at the Bot Gardens, SANBI, the South African National Biodiversity Institute, has put up Water Savers' signs but I hear that at V&A Waterfront in the very heart of the Cape Town, they have not even one sign telling visitors to use water sparely, not one. Shame on the V&A Waterfront and its owners Growthpoint and the Public Investment Corporation, the South African government's pension fund company looked after by the ANC's appointed Finance Minister. Does that mean the national government of South Africa want to see Cape Town reach Day Zero?
So it seems that it is business as usual for the Western Cape's tourism industry while the Cape Townonians face a disaster of note. Surely the City of Cape Town can at least balance the big business interests with their own citizens who pay their taxes. This is something that only together we can beat.
Sigh, enough ranting about water, here in a wet Bot Gardens, the animal life enjoying the rain, such as this damselfly sunning itself during a break in the clouds.
Okay it was the first time I ever heard this word "switcheroo" used. It sounded intriguing in the context it was used, the black eagles did a switcheroo. Huh? After getting back home, I just had to look up if this was a real word, sorry Andrew, it is, switcheroo: a sudden, unexpected variation or reversal. It is colloquially used in reference to an act of swapping two objects. Wow switcheroo was even in my spell check. Well you learn a new word every day, thanks Andrew for this new word.
Tomorrow I have another hike down into the kloof to check on the repairs to stop the raw sewerage leaks that have been flowing for quite some time now into the Walter Sisulu National Botanical Gardens. Now my light hiking shoes have not fared well over the years and I did a switcheroo. See what I did there, got my old replaced by a new pair but NOOO that is not quite what switcheroo means.
I had to go to 2 different conservation meetings this afternoon at the Botanical Gardens, with representatives from the Walter Sisulu National Botanical Gardens, Botanical Society of South Africa, Wild Orchids of Southern Africa, Proteadal Conservation Association, and the Black Eagle Project, just to drop names. And it was at the first meeting when I was asking about the Black Eagle pair that are currently nesting at the gardens that the word switcheroo was used by Andrew the chief horticulturist at the Botanical Gardens.
When the Botanical Gardens was established in 1982, there was a pair of Black Eagles nesting near the waterfall. Reports of this female dated way back to early 70s with the males changing 3 times over the years. The latest male showed up in 1999 as a young 4 year old eagle. Last year no eagles nested which was a big let down and then this year the pair of black eagles showed up and started building the nest again but it was only the male building the old nest with the female starting an entire new nest further away from the waterfall. It was only by April that a switcheroo was discovered. A new young female had replaced the old 40 year old female.
I must confess that I have a weakness for orchids, for they are to me the most sensual yet charismatic flowers of the plant kingdom, the yin and yang so to speak. Nature’s erotic beauty is so breathtaking that my words will not do justice so I will let the orchids speak for themselves.
If you are quick these beauties plus many more can be found at the Orchid Lovers’ Fair now being held at the Walter Sisulu Botanical Garden, here in Johannesburg, this weekend.
This morning I walked into the small hall packed with prize winning orchids, and the perfume from these arousing displays just hit me between the eyes. I just wanted to find a quiet corner, lie down and breathe it all in.
They say that the grass is greener on the other side but it is usually because it is over a septic tank. In this case it is not far from the truth.
I moved to the Roodekrans area of Johannesburg last year because of the beautiful views into the kloof above the Walter Sisulu National Botanical Gardens and the very rare flora that is found here and nowhere else. It was these wilds inside the city limits that attracted us to move here in the first place. Soon it became apparent that not all was rosy as it looked or smelled.
Soon after moving to Roodekrans, we found itinerants living up in the kloof, knowledge of which the estate agent and seller kindly hid from us. Some of these itinerants were religious people coming for the holy waters of the 3 springs that are the source of the stream which eventually becomes the Crocodile River. It is this stream which flows down the magnificent waterfall and through Botanical Gardens. Some itinerants are digging into the sides of the cliffs, for what we can only speculate as there is no gold in these hills so say the police to whom I report it to. All of them cut down the Protea trees for firewood and dig up medicinal plants in a protected biodiversity area that can’t be quickly replaced.
A lot of Johannesburg residents like myself are very proud of the Walter Sisulu National Botanical Gardens with its astonishing waterfall set in a stunning landscaped garden and not to forget the Black Eagles that nest there in the cliffs. Well sorry to burst that bubble as like the saying goes it is green because it is over a septic tank. Yes raw sewerage is flowing at a steady rate directly into the stream that flows through the Botanical Gardens.
Just under a month ago during a Joburg Photowalkers hike into the kloof above the Botanical Gardens, a raw sewerage leak flowing directly into the stream was discovered and duly reported to the City of Joburg, and today I was tasked to take a walk down into the kloof to see if anything has been done about the sewerage leak. What I was hoping to find was that the leaking sewer pipe had being repaired but sadly this was not the case as nothing had being done to rectify the leak. As you can see in the very top photo of this post, that the grass is very green grass by being fed from all the pollutants this has been going on for a very long time.
While we were down here in the kloof, we decided to walk up past the Manie Mulder Waterfall to check on the conditions further upstream and on the 3 springs which form the source of the stream. Along the way we saw itinerants living in hovels dug out into the sides of the cliffs and even had the pleasure of witnessing an exorcism of a demon possessed person in the stream by 2 priests. I kid you not. I did not take any photos of the exorcism but I asked a lot of questions about the plastic covered person standing naked in the stream.
At one of the springs, we sadly watched a woman with a baby on her back drink and collect holy water from the rubbish littered water source that was sweeping out of the rock cliffs. I have been told that these holy waters bring in bus loads of people and I wonder if polluted water have healing powers that I don't know about.
But the worst was yet to come. To our horror we found a major sewerage pipe blockage which was overflowing into the stream above the source where the woman and her baby were drinking from and where the demon exorcism was taking place. This sewerage was flowing at a steady pace down a small valley between Jarrah Street and Albida Place, Breaunanda, a suburb of Krugersdorp in Mogale City, into the small stream that then flows through the kloof, over 2 waterfalls and into the Botanical Gardens below before becoming the Crocodile River.
Forget exorcisms, tree cutting, and squatters, now I was so filled with mixed emotions, from anger to crying in shame for the human race. I could handle the religious fanatics even with their associated litter but the raw sewerage flowing into this beautiful kloof was the last straw. Time to make a stink about this, like that Aussie song How can we sleep when our beds are burning? The first raw sewerage leak was reported to the City of Joburg and yet nothing was done, this new bigger leak will be reported to Mogale City but unless we all make some noise, I expect nothing will be done.
In the corner of my garden is this aloe growing, and while chatting to my neighbour on this side of the garden about security co-operation, he saw the aloe and asked me if I knew that that aloe is very rare. According to my neighbour it only grows in this gorge that runs along my property all the way to the Walter Sisulu Botanical Gardens below. But for the life of the neighbour, he couldn’t remember the name. I tried to do some internet research on this unknown aloe as one does now days but had no joy on a rare aloe growing in this eco sub-system.
It is the last weekend that Lynda’s dad, Hilton, will be with us as he flies back to Cape Town tomorrow. To make the most of this sad weekend, we took dad on a picnic at his happy place here in Johannesburg, the Botanical Gardens just below our house.
We found a nice shady spot not too far from the waterfall and settled down for some serious picnicking and resting the eyes. But it wasn’t long before we were joined by a pair of guineafowls who wanted to share our picnic.
It turned out to be a lovely day, close encounters with guineafowls, a poisonous grasshopper circling us, a robin and a pair of other unknown birds who were jealous of the guineafowls, a tortoise and another.
The weather looked good with afternoon thundershowers to cool the day down later so we decided to take Lynda’s dad, Hilton, to the Botanical Gardens just below our home.
Matthew was a blessing as he became very useful as a wheelchair pusher as it became hot in the narrow valley leading up to the 70m Witpoortjie falls. Both the grand old Black Eagle Emoyeni and her young mate Thulane were nowhere to be seen but just the peacefulness of the place was more than enough.
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