All in the neighbourhood, Danish Environmental Protection Agency

South African – Danish Environmental Co-operation

All in the neighbourhood

Apartheid’s planners allowed houses to be constructed right next to smoke-belching factories. Residents are now making progress with demands for a cleaner environment. But they still feel that industry responds mainly to pressure

Michelle Simon grew up with the smell of sulphur from two of South Africa’s largest oil refineries in her nose. The view from her school yard was a huge paper mill.

"When you are young, you are impressed by these huge companies. When you grow up, you realise what they are doing to the environment," she says.

Simon’s country is presently going through a similar realization. Previous fascination for industry is rapidly giving way to concern over the impact of pollution.

Apartheid’s planners would happily place houses right up to the fence of the most polluting industry, particularly when the residents were so-called non-whites. Protests were ignored or drowned in tear gas.

Simon got her first doses of tear gas when she marched to the paper mill at the age of 16, even though the demands of the marchers were humble: the protesters asked that the log trucks and chlorine tankers make a slight detour and avoid going through the most densely populated area.

Simon is now the only employee servicing the rapidly growing membership of South Durban Community Environmental Alliance (SDCEA). She feels that government is finally listening and that industry is taking protest seriously. But only when the pressure is sufficient.

"Before 1994, we achieved nothing. In 1995 Mandela woke up industry and made them realise they must do something," says Simon.

Poisonous sightseeing

Danced supports non-governmental organizations (NGOs) such as SDCEA as a way of increasing environmental awareness in South Africa and to encourage public debate. South of Durban, these NGOs have found a most receptive audience.

Simon takes us on a so-called Toxic Tour, a drive through absurd planning where you can look straight into some of South Africa’s most polluting industries from school yards and gardens.

First stop is Settlers Primary School in the predominantly Indian suburb of Merebank, sandwiched between two refineries. On average, education is interrupted by sulphur fumes every second day. On particularly bad days, the teachers will check the wind arrow behind the principal’s office.

If the wind is northerly, the school will call the refinery which belongs to Engen, a petroleum company. If the wind comes from the south, the offender is BP and Shell’s refinery 1,5 kilometres away. To the west, again just 750 meters away, you find Durban’s largest sewage treatment plant. And to complete the picture, the Mondi paper mill and the run ways of Durban’s international airport are all less than two kilometres away.

Vomiting pupils

"It distracts from education when you have students vomiting in class," says Shalo Khalawan. The most severely affected children can get oxygen from bottles kept in the school’s small sick bay.

"You are busy teaching an important lesson when the wind brings in the smell. Children start coughing and put up their hands. And you know they are not bluffing because you can smell it yourself," says Lawrence Vartharagulu, another teacher who has the additional title of Environmental Officer.

For six months during 2000, SDCEA and a local doctor assisted the school in monitoring the affected children. Every second day on average was a so-called bad day during which about 25 percent of the children would be sent home to recover. According to the doctor, 40 percent of the children in the area are suffering from bronchitis or other respiratory illnesses.

This documentation is just one of many initiatives in the community’s battle for a better environment. In 2000, it led to a breakthrough. Two ministers, Valli Moosa of Tourism and Environment and Alec Erwin of Trade and Industry, presented a plan for cleaning up the South Durban Basin, arguably the country’s worst example of a residential area placed in the middle of heavy industry.

Overcoming 50 years of lies

An important part of the plan is setting emission standards – which both industry and activists have been demanding for years.

"If there were rules, it would make everybody’s life easier," says Alan Munn, chief environmental engineer at the Engen refinery. He explains that rules would level the playing field. Industry could invest in the environment whilst still being able to compete as everybody else would be forced to take same steps.

"Where management is not supportive, people in industry wouldn’t have to beg for money for the environment, because they could say:’the law says we must do this – either we do it, or you get fined or go to jail’."

Munn trained in the United Kingdom and returned to the oil industry in South Africa which had suffered badly from years of isolation. Technology was not up to scratch, particularly not on the environmental side.

"The previous general manager here realised we had a problem, which is quite something in South Africa. I was employed because I became aware that there are better systems overseas."

One of Munn’s first breakthroughs was an informal agreement with Bobby Peek, a veteran of the environmental struggle in South Africa in general and south of Durban in particular. Peek is a co-founder of SDCEA and got Engen to promise 65 percent reductions in its emissions of sulphur dioxide.

"SDCEA did an excellent job. They negotiated a plan with us at a time when government wasn’t interested. It is largely because of their pressure that government has been forced to set standards," says Munn.

He is not surprised that the complaints from the neighbours continue nevertheless.

"We have 50 years of mistrust, hate and lies to overcome. We have let them down on promises in the past," says Munn.

In mid-2000, the municipality suggested that a divorce could be a solution. The idea was to move the residents and make the whole area an industrial zone. But this is flatly rejected by both residents and industry.

"In a highly technological era, you don’t remove people. You clean up," says Khalawan.

"We would not condone forced removals. With the history of this country, it is not on," says Munn.

Government needs pressure

Peek, who negotiated the deal with Engen on behalf of the residents, has since used his experiences from a childhood and youth in the shadow of the refinery to establish a national NGO, groundWork.

Peek can’t really decide whether to be proud of, or concerned about, the victories won by himself and the residents south of Durban. In December 2000, Moosa used the example of Durban to highlight the importance of NGOs when he welcomed delegates from all over the world to a UN conference on pesticides.

"What he really said at this occasion was government is not going to do it on its own. Government will act if there is an organised community," says Peek.

This is why Peek finds it both important and courageous that Danced has decided to support both government and NGOs in South Africa.

"When I first went to Danced for money for SDCEA in 1997, they were a bit concerned that SDCEA’s work was too confrontational. My argument was ‘we are ill and have been ignored - now we have to be more assertive in what we want as a community.’ Eventually Danced came around," he says.

Writing the request for support became a useful exercise in itself: "If Danced had not come in, we wouldn’t have been able to challenge refineries and government in the way we did. They forced us to plan and to articulate our ideas," says Peek.