It’s a busy afternoon at the end of the month in Samson Mabele’s yard in Ninth Avenue, Alexandra. Fourteen families live on the plot. Mabele, a giant of a man, has to duck to get inside his two-roomed brick house which he shares with his wife and a chandelier.
Around his house are various wood-and-iron shacks, some freestanding brick rooms, a traditional thatched mud-brick dwelling and an abandoned truck converted into a caravan, all organised neatly around a common-access drive. The yard is also home to 30 sheep and goats, which spend their days in an open-air pen and their nights in roofed sheds on either side of Mabele’s home.
Two elegantly dressed men drive up in a white sedan and pick their way past women hanging up clothes and children playing. They have come to buy goats to slaughter over the weekend. They stand at the pen and study the goats carefully. There is some debate, but soon they have selected two goats — which Mabele’s assistant marks with red enamel paint — and settled on a price: R950 for the big one, R650 for the smaller one.
With one fluid movement, Mabele’s assistant heaves the bleating goat over his shoulder and into the open boot of the car. He then repeats the process with the second goat, which seems more stoical about its fate. The goats soon settle down and two satisfied clients drive off. Goats are famously obliging.
An elderly lady arrives to buy sheep, but she needs to resolve the question of price. She wants a discount, having bought some sheep from Mabele three weeks ago. Because she does not have her own transport, Mabele will use his truck to deliver the sheep later in the day.
This same truck makes the long journey to Kuruman every month to buy goats for the business — a journey which takes nine hours there and 12 hours back.
Mabele, who has been selling sheep and goats for 15 years, is one of eight livestock traders operating in Alexandra. Since 1998, the council has served repeated notices on Mabele instructing him to remove his animals.
The most recent notice, which he received in February from the Section 59 council executive committee, suggests that Mabele’s business is inconsistent with the vision of Johannesburg as a ”world-class African city”. The letter states: ”The culture of indigenous blacks slaughtering animals for ancestral rituals has resulted in the previous government allowing blacks to live with slaughter animals in the black townships to the detriment of health and the environment.”
The suggestion that Mabele’s business is unhygienic enrages him: ”I have lots of customers,” says Mabele, because ”in this business you go where you find the good stuff. You can come every day and see that my kraals are clean. Even the inspectors from the metro say [they are] clean.”
According to Joel Masetle, environmental health manager for Region 7, where Alexandra is located, the keeping of livestock is indeed a problem. Livestock cause traffic disruptions if allowed to roam freely. There is also a problem of space in areas designed for residential purposes only.
Animals relieve themselves anywhere, polluting streams and rivers, from which the animals, in turn, drink. Animal excrement contains E coli bacteria. Smells can attract flies. There are also objections from the community: people complain about goats tipping over refuse bins or eating their gardens and vegetable patches.
The council acknowledges that there is a long history of livestock in urban areas, largely associated with cultural practices related to appeasing the spirits or ancestors. Where Western culture uses abattoirs for slaughtering, in African culture the ”spilling of blood” at the location is important. Masetle recognises that traditional slaughtering is a practice that cannot be eradicated. The approach should rather be to educate people about conditions to make it more acceptable.
So, for Mabele there is no alternative but to ignore the various notices instructing him to move his animals to a rural area. Goats and sheep are his livelihood and his clientele is overwhelmingly urban — with customers living in Soweto, Tembisa, Diepsloot, Alex, ”town”, Bramley, Hillbrow and Jeppestown.
Mabele has made repeated efforts to legalise his business and to find land nearby where he can graze his animals. He has a sheaf of letters he has written since 1995 to Nelson Mandela, Tokyo Sexwale and the Johannesburg authorities — and their replies, directing him to the Department of Land Affairs, instructing him to identify an available piece of land and referring him to someone else. But vacant land near Alexandra is hard to find.
Mabele has tried to organise other livestock traders in Alex to discuss with council officials how animals can be accommodated. He agrees that the business should be regulated. ”Kraals should be clean. Animals should be controlled so that they do not roam the streets. Livestock traders should be provided with small farms close to urban areas so that they can keep animals and graze animals near their homes and near their clients. Without grazing land, I am forced to buy fodder for my kraal animals which means the business is barely profitable.”
According to Masetle, Region 7 has developed a strategy — in consultation with livestock keepers, the Department of Agriculture and Land Affairs, the SPCA, Metro police, veterinary services, municipal housing, and environmental and health divisions — to balance the needs of livestock keepers and the City of Johannesburg.
The phases of the plan include identifying the livestock keepers, telling people why it’s better to farm animals elsewhere, and participating in the farmer support programme organised by the Agriculture and Land Affairs Department. In the last resort, if people do not buy into the plan, there will be vigorous enforcement of the law.
In the meantime, Mabele has leased some land on a temporary basis in Bramley View, a decayed industrial area just outside Alex. Sheep and goats occupy one kraal, pigs another, and a herd of six cattle are in a third. Piles of lucerne and big bales of grass create a jarring contrast with the dense housing nearby, the freeway in the distance, the new industrial parks and the electricity lines overhead — evidence that the divide between town and country, rural and urban, is by no means clear-cut.
Additional reporting by Msizi Myeza
This article forms part of a series of fortnightly articles on urban life called ”People are living here”