Building of an EcoCity
Colourful
village rises
among the
shacks
By Nicky Furniss
0n a cloudy, drizzly day in Ivory Park, Mathapelo Mkhonza is explaining the concept of solar cooking: "We have Atlodjadji, the Rain Queen, now all we need is a Sun King for our solar panels!" she laughs.
Overcast or not, the sun seems to shine brightly on Ivory Park's EcoCitv: an oasis in a scrubland of pylons, smoke and tin roofs.
In the heart of the informal settlement, where a permanent cloud of hazy smoke from coal fires hangs heavy a filthy river is banked high with chemical foam and unemployment runs at 50%, a brightly coloured group of buildings make up the EcoCity.
The village is a hive of activity, with building going on in every corner.
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Intended as a demonstration site and tourist attraction, the completed village will include indigenous gardens a traditional African kraal, a poets' corner, a community centre and vibrant economic activity.
At the edge of the village is an organic market where farmers from six co-ops sell their organic produce to the community
Within the village, several types of environmentally friendly houses are showcased. The community Centre, which will be used for workshops and training, is a prime example of "eco-building".
Its doors have been salvaged from a condemned building, polystyrene blocks will be used for insulation and its roof will be covered with soil and grass to ensure a constant temperature in both cold and warm weather, Its windows face northward to ensure it gets as much natural light as possible.
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Solar panels will be the main source of electricity for the village. The 14 women who form the Ubuhle Bemvelo Eco-construction co-op are building a residential village of 30 eco-houses using local materials and environmental techniques: "We want to encourage people to use eco-building techniques. We also want people to live and work in the same place as it cuts down on transport and pollution."
Annie Sugrue an EcoCity managing trustee, says the houses will be purchased through a housing subsidy process, "but preference will be given to people who have shown a commitment to the eco-city and the environment, or who have been involved in the building." Sugrue also wants to encourage a diversity of people living in the village, including people from different co-ops and from the youth.
Even though it costs R4 000 to R5 000 to make a house eco-friendly, Sugrue maintains that these costs are offset relatively quickly due to savings in heating and lighting costs: "Let's face it, in our climate, we don't need to spend anything on heating if the houses are orientated and built correctly in the first place."
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Depending on the success of the residential village, Sugrue plans to create more eco-villages in different areas of Ivory Park.
The village is at the center of a series of interlinked projects that grew out of a fight against the proposed establishment of a toxic waste dump in Ivory Park, near Midrand, in the early 1990s After the battle was won, EcoCity was born as a brave experiment in alleviating poverty and doing it in a sustainable and environmentally friendly manner.
It's a partnership between the EcoCity Trust, the City of Johannesburg and many other groups both within and outside Ivory Park, as well as local and international funders.
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Report from Jo’burg – Day 7
Following the talk on eco-cities yesterday evening, I had planned to take a bus mid-morning with Herbie Giradet and others down to the Eco-city project in the Midland township, an hour or so out of Jo’burg. These townships are a prominent legacy from the apartheid era, dormitory towns surrounding the big cities in which non-whites were not allowed to live. The bus did not show up. Or, more likely, it showed up, but such is the chaos in the bus park, with so many vehicles coming and going, that I was unable to identify it.
So, I took a taxi south to another of Jo’burg’s great townships, Alexandra, the starting point for the three great protest marches to the Sandton conference centre. Even for this Belfast boy, the scenes on the way were profoundly shocking. The army had set up machine guns on top of armed personnel carriers. The police looked really mean, heavily armed with pistols, rifles, clubs and shields. With a feeling of sickness in my guts, I thought, that should I survive, I would at least be able to say I was a witness to the Armageddon today.
The feelings of dread were multiplied by the fact that my intention was to join one of the more radical marches. There were three marches in all. The Social Movements Indaba, a gathering of NGOs and other civil society organisations, international in flavour and including many veterans of summit protests over the years, such as Vandana Shiva and Naomi Klein. The Landless People’s Movement, radical voice of the dispossessed, mostly from southern Africa (inevitably so – how many of the truly dispossessed can make the trek to Jo’burg?) And the Global People’s Forum, officially sanctioned by the ANC, South Africa’s ruling party, carrying the torch for Palestine and Tibet and promoting a more moderate, social democratic approach.
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Well, the taxi driver got it wrong and I found myself not with the Indaba but in Alexandra stadium, starting point for the Global People’s Forum. Relief far outweighed disappointment (the police are really unlikely to attack an ANC march) and I successfully fought off all efforts on the part of the driver to take me on to my original march of choice. A real rainbow gathering. Palestinians and Tibetans in large numbers. But also supporters of a host of other causes – women’s rights, the removal of Robert Mugabe, the South African Communist Party, the rights of indigenous people, and on and on.
The three marches were carefully segregated, not least because the Landless People’s march included a strong contingent of ‘so-called’ war veterans from Zimbabwe. (In fact, most of them were far too young to have even been alive during the Chimurenga, the liberation war.) Ours was the last march to leave on the ten-kilometre route. And eventually, after sizzling under the sun for a few hours (few people had brought any kind of sun protection as it has been cool and drizzly for the previous couple of days), we set off.
When I used to work for the British volunteer programme, VSO, a common aphorism was, ‘Go to Latin America, come back a revolutionary. Go to Asia, come back a mystic. Go to Africa, come back a party-goer’. Well, without understating the level of political consciousness and sophistication of Africans (who put us Northerners to shame in terms of their engagement in the political process), the march emphatically demonstrated the point. We covered the ten kilometre route in a little under four hours of uninterrupted singing and toyi-toying.
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Forgive me, my South African friends, while I explain to our unlucky brothers and sisters who do not (yet) know what toyi-toying is. You have probably seen it on the TV – a fast, low-to-the-ground, swaying step-dance to the rhythm of the song being sung. Drawn, I imagine, from Zulu impi war dances, it is just plain fabulous! We were perhaps 100 in the group I was in, one great phalanx of swaying, pulsing humanity. And when we passed under the flyover bridges, the booming echo made it feel like we were 1,000. On the many occasions when we stopped, waiting for the marchers in front to resume their advance, a circle was formed for dancers to go into the centre to really strut their stuff. Needless to say, yours truly relished the opportunity!
How does the idea of listening to four hours of political songs and slogans grab you? Pretty dire, huh? Only if you do not know South Africa. This is singing of the highest order, riveting, pulsating freedom songs – the sort of stuff you could burn onto a CD with very little editing and listen to for hour after hour. Newly-found friends on the demo translated the meanings for me. Simple songs of struggle, of adversity, of finding ways to stay courageous and cheerful. Singing was one of the few joys left to these people during the dark years and they have truly perfected the art!
The march was ‘uneventful’ as they say. In fact, it was a joyful parade, a great celebration in song and dance, a liberating of the streets from dreaded motor vehicles, a rare chance for us to be equal and united under the sun, each one a part of the great dance. And, coincidentally, there was no trouble and, as far as I know, no arrests.
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And then, we separated back into our own streams, the poor packed into sweltering buses for the ride back to the townships, myself on to the conference centre through the brash and sterile corridors of the shopping mall. It felt sad and lonely.
On to a jazz gig to see the great Jonas Gwangwa. One time leader of the ANC’s cultural troupe, Amandla, I had last seen him and Amandla in Accra, Ghana in 1986. Then, he had mesmerised us with what is still the greatest single piece of jazz improvisation I have ever seen, a breathtaking 40-minute trombone solo. And now, here in Jo’burg 18 years later, he stills works a quite unique magic, weaving African melodies and be-bop into an exquisite musical tapestry. I went to bed with my head swinging to the music of Africa and my soul filled with gratitude for the continent’s distinctive contribution to the experience of what it is to be alive.
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