Hazard to asset: Rehabilitating Joburg’s waterways

Urban waterways contain our greatest resource but accessibility has become lost because of uncontrolled urbanisation. Spatial planning has restricted or completely severed the environmental and social benefits of urban waterways from urban residents, namely how rivers can improve their quality of life, community health, and sense of community.

Unfortunately, the possible benefits are also hindered by grey infrastructure, whereby urban waterways’ natural morphology and processes have been stripped and replaced with impermeable surfaces – especially concrete. Furthermore, numerous other problems are present in and around neglected urban waterways as discussed further. 

Take the 97km long Jukskei river in Gauteng for example. Throughout history, the Jukskei River has been the prominent location where people would settle. Here, people and animals had access to fresh water and fertile land. The river would eventually play an essential role in the development of Johannesburg, the largest city in Gauteng. 

The Highveld region, which includes Johannesburg, tends to have heavy rainfall patterns – floods are therefore frequent, especially considering that many areas of Johannesburg are characteristically developed in close proximity to the Jukskei river – often in the flood line. These factors lead to a brief period of warning time before floods – usually just a few hours maximum.

Not only does the infrastructure become damaged during the floods, there is also a lack of ongoing maintenance. This results in the river being heavily polluted with sewage. The pollution in turn contributes to the growth of invasive water hyacinth on the Hartbeespoort Dam, which the Jusksei River flows into. The river is also polluted by urban runoff and other waste to such an extent that the tributaries have become blocked, completely disrupting the natural flow of water in the streams.

Disadvantaged communities bear the brunt of the negative effects associated with neglected urban waterways, such as Alexandra Township that is situated next to the Jukskei River. The township (which was initially planned for 70 000 people) has become an unsafe and unhealthy home to approximately 750 000 people known for its “backyard shacks”. The infrastructure has become overloaded due to the unexpected growth in population. Water for the future states that “what should be an asset for the community is a hazard and a health risk”.

To mitigate the problems associated with urban waterways, there needs to be ongoing commitment to rehabilitate the water bodies into clean, natural waterways. Initiatives to clear the Jukskei River of a multitude of waste have been implemented by organisations such as Water for the Future and the Department of Water and Sanitation as part of the Water Month Celebrations and World Cleanup Day. 

Rehabilitation campaigns can be noticed beyond the borders of Gauteng as Johannesburg has been identified as a sub-continental polluter whereby the city’s pollution is carried north through the Jukskei River into the Limpopo Province.  

There are numerous solutions that arise from the need to inspire a sense of valuing water resources.

Urban waterways and a more liveable Johannesburg

Urgent government intervention is needed to prioritise urban waterways along with spatial planning policies. Bruce Reznik, the director of LA Waterkeeper, says that “we spend billions of dollars to pave over paradise, then we realise we have flooding problems. So we spend billions more to build concrete channels to get the water away from us. Then we realise we have a water supply problem”.

Furthermore, policy-making with regards to blue-green infrastructure should become a priority in order to formulate strategies that will address problems as mentioned above. One focus area would be to rehabilitate the vegetation along and within waterways through recanalisation– returning it to its natural state. This simple intervention will prevent the erosion of river banks and reinforce bank stabilisation; improve water quality and the health of the waterway by slowing water flow; create an open space for recreational purposes; and providing a more appealing waterway environment. 

These benefits are also invisionedincisioned for The Reimagining Your Moonee Ponds Creek project – an initiative that could be implemented worldwide, especially to the Jusksei Rivier. The aim of such a policy would also be to reinforce the conservation of urban waterways and to utilise them to manage stormwater, as well as provide other regulating, supporting, cultural on and provisioning services. 

Community engagement is another step to mitigating the damage to urban waterways. The Department of Water and Sanitation’s Clear Rivers Campaign emphasised that “the relationship between communities and healthy rivers can never be overstated”. Emphasis could be placed on NPOs to change communities’ attitudes and perceptions towards waterways through thoughtful campaigning. If communities understand the cause of human-induced natural disasters such as floods; how to protect themselves, others and the environment; as well as the potential benefits of healthy urban waterways, then communities would become more involved in maintaining urban waterways and other blue-green infrastructures.

As urban waterways are considered corridors in blue-green infrastructure, it is also worth noting that an area that is well maintained in terms of green-spaces, seems to have an influence on crime rates. A study published in 2022 found that in the global south, there is a 1.2% decrease in crime for every 1% increase in total green space. 

The outcomes of the campaigns, lead by Water for the Future, is based on the three prongs strategy to “bring health, wealth, and biodiversity to the Jukskei headwaters”. 

This brings us back to the potential that urban waterways hold and what ecosystem services they could provide. The concept of ecosystem services assists in assigning value to services that have direct advantage on human’s physical health, social, or economic terms. When urban waterways are maintained in terms of infrastructure and biodiversity, they provide ecosystems that produces healthy, clean water; regulate stormwater, soil, and air quality; support habitats for biodiversity; and they create a sense of place. 

Reinventing Urban waterways have the potential to provide holistic campaigns such as the Water for the Future’s approach and the potential to unlock the previously overlooked possibilities, uses and potential of urban waterways. Another example is our new projects by Young Urbanists that seeks to reinvent the Litterboom Project which aims to clean South Africa’s many, polluted urban waterways and wetlands through innovative, tangible technology.

If we can rehabilitate the Jukskei River and Gauteng’s many urban waterways, we can be one step closer to a more liveable country. It is time we stop producing more endless, ambiguous policies and get our hands dirty to transform our cities where people and nature are prioritised, not endless concrete, roads and urban sprawl. 

Danika Prinsloo is a candidate urban planner registered with the South African Council for Planners and is part of the young urbanist committee as the water and biodiversity lead. Ruth Manda is a SACLAP-registered landscape architect and is chair of the Gauteng region of the Institute for Landscape Architecture in South Africa.

The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Mail & Guardian.