Paul Kirk
Anne Jones has lived in Wentworth all her life and she now wants out. Like her mother and sister, she suffers from asthma. As a nurse she knows the fumes she breathes in from the refinery did not give her the condition, but they do make it worse.
“Sometimes, especially at night and in summer when it is hot and humid, the smell is not even bearable. Most of Wenties sleep with their windows shut. You suffer from the terrible heat, but you have to do it in order to keep the smell out. The smell gets into your lungs and it feels like someone is squeezing the air out of your body. It is terrible. You just want to die,” says Jones.
Apartheid-era town planning saw the poorest communities of Durban – Wentworth, Austerville and Merebank – develop next to the port’s two refineries. The white suburbs nearest the refineries are all situated much higher than the Indian and Coloured suburbs – ensuring white people had to breathe in the least pollution and are affected the least.
“As a kid I can remember everybody around me in my class suffering from flu and chest pains. I can remember coughing up this thick, oily muck every time I tried to run. I can remember collapsing into a wheezing mass if I tried to play sport.”
Jones says you can see Wentworth is polluted by simply looking at the walls and curtains of the suburb.
“We painted the house last year and already the paint is stained. Our curtains are also buggered, we have to wash them every week to keep them white, the smog and muck stains them black. And if this pollution does that to curtains, what does it do to your lungs?”
She says residents of the area suffer from constant severe chest complaints. “Doctors will tell you that the pollution does not cause asthma, and so on. They will tell you that it will exacerbate a chest complaint, but not cause one. Well, the thing is that many people have ruined their health by living next to the refinery. I plan to get out of here as soon as possible. I no longer have to stay in Wentworth because of the colour of my skin. I no longer want to have to live with an asthma pump in my hand and suffer every night.”