Advocacy & Education
We are dedicated to reviving the Jukskei river’s ecosystem and potential social benefits through collaborative, community-based interventions.
The participation of the community through which the river flows is crucial to realising this goal. Our approach involves hosting information-sharing stands in key areas and holding walkabouts with multiple stakeholders around the river precinct, exposing participants to current issues concerning the area.
The walkabouts have been co-designed with Dlalanje Tours, and are led by tour operator Grant Ncobo through key streets of Lorentzville. Tour groups are shown features such as our pilot Sustainable Urban Drainage System (SuDS) project, the Eco Tree Seat; and the progress of our Community Bin collaboration to tackle problematic dumping sites. The tour showcases the ecological wonder and human mess associated with Daylight Point – where the Jukskei first emerges from its underground channel. The many beautiful and beneficial aspects of the area, like the bridge, park, and flowing stream are juxtaposed with the terrible stench of sewer water and rotting trash.
These workshop-discussions and tours started in the form of Zoom presentations for schools during COVID lockdown; now, some schools book walks as an annual occurrence. We have also hosted many high school students in immersive community/ environmental voluntary programmes where they learn on the ground and assist with documenting and recording items like broken storm water infrastructure.
Following key walkabouts, solution-seeking workshops enable participants to co-design ideas that empower them to play a role in the regeneration. During talks, artist and facilitator Francis Burger documents all contributions and produces mind-maps that are archived for public-facing educational art murals and other interventions.
Thus far we have walked (and talked) with government officials from Johannesburg Inner City Partnership, Johannesburg Development Agency (JDA), Johannesburg Roads Agency (JRA), GDARD (Gauteng Department of Agriculture, Land Reform and Rural Development) City of Johannesburg Development Planning, and City of Johannesburg Environment and Infrastructure Services (COJ-EISD). We have hosted businesses for walks and workshops such as the African Bank, Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS), Pikitup and others. We have co-hosted a clean and green workshop with Maker’s Valley Partnership that saw local urban farmers and community members presented and speak about the issues around waste. We have also connected with other active river groups further along the river, such as GATHA from Alexandra and ARMOUR from the Hennops River, to understand their issues in their own particular zones. We present some of our walks in further detail below.
Many of these walks and workshops were made possible with the Sustainable Together grant awarded by the Goethe Institut Johannesburg and the British Council.
Group Walks
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Over Women’s Month 2021, we had the special privilege to kick off our Public Participatory Programme with a group of women that live in our community.
During the walk, we introduced them to the work that was done around the remediatory pilot site of the Daylight point of the Jukskei River.
These women from different age groups, cultures and beliefs learnt about the future green opportunities that could come from a rejuvenated urban waterway. We listened to their shared memories from interactions with nature that have brought them joy.
These sentiments were beautifully captured and displayed on the walls of the Daylight Point where we set up our temporary information stand - a space running during June and July 2021, where we documented how the community perceives the state of the Jukskei River.
We are especially grateful to embark on this journey, to engage with the community, to co-create a clean and safe green corridor along the Jukskei river, to be enjoyed by all by especially women and children - thanks to the grant from the Goethe-institut together with the British Council for making it possible for us to create safer spaces for women and children in our community.
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In 2021, we hosted local business owners from the Ellis Park Stadium, Bruma Landowner’s Association, Kensington Heritage Foundation, as well as local councillors, for our public participatory program. Led by Grant Ngcobo from Dlalanje, we walked the ‘green corridor’ from Ellis Park to Victoria Yards, much of which abuts the properties owned and run by the attendees.
All along the way, we highlighted the future green opportunities that can emerge from a fresh urban waterway: Rehabilitating the river and the ecosystem will, in turn, enrich properties and businesses.
Besides the health and well-being associated with green space, we stressed that development of the space is a shared responsibility – a private and public partnership – between government and landowners.
We then convened afternoon talks where we explored solutions with the business owners to the current environmental issues like pollution, and bad smells! Everyone is positively committed to the removal of invasive aliens, and the resurrection of sustainable urban drainage systems.
It was a great pleasure to have local business owners/landowners support our vision of creating a safe environment where children can play. A special thanks to all the attendees who walked the corridor with us, lending their ears and their perspectives on the Jukskei!
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The Jukskei River runs through Bruma, Alexandra, and Hartebeespoort Dam before it crosses with the Crocodile River, which flows, as the Limpopo, all the way to Xai Xai, Mozambique. A spectrum of cities and locations are affected by the state of the river: what we allow into the river now can disrupt the lives of many others who live downstream.
The river is a symbol of Ubuntu in this way, and Ubuntu motivated our walk with other environmentalist and activist groups along the beginning of the green corridor on the 17th of September 2021.
Amongst us were GATHA from Alexandra who are doing major clean-ups downstream, and inspiring the value of creating green solutions to the environment of Alex. They, like Water for the Future, have the future benefits of tourism and jobs in mind. ARMOUR was also there, as were representatives from a host of bodies from Makers Valley Collective in Bezuidenhout Valley to the Hennops – all who are concerned with rehabilitating our waterways.
Introducing these heroes to the Daylight Point, where the river springs above ground for the first time, was a great privilege for us. We received much encouragement for our work there as well as at the monitoring station.
The afternoon was spent discussing possible solutions to water pollution and dumping, as well as sharing input on greening, educating and improving biodiversity along our riparian zones. We would like to thank everyone who took their time off their own projects and walked with us. It was an honor to be around activists doing amazing work not only for themselves but for their communities as well.
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