When we speak of spatiality, it is often in the context of apartheid. We know that townships are the result of the apartheid city, which was designed to isolate black people, who were deemed as nothing more than a reserve army of labour, from central business districts and leafy suburbs. As reservoirs for cheap labour used to build the White economy, townships were neglected and systematically underdeveloped.
We see the result of spatial apartheid every day and as a result, the narrative that we have come to accept that is that the spatial injustices that are happening in our country are solely the result of the apartheid system that hurled black people to the margins of existence.
But in post-apartheid SA there have been many situations in which our own government has perpetuated the spatial injustices that were the bedrock of colonialism and apartheid, and there is no clearer evidence of this than what is happening in the Vaal Triangle. On the one hand, we have corporations being given a free pass to off-load costs of their pollution of the environment to communities, on the other, there is privatisation of common and public goods which feeds into their systematic dispossession.
All this is happening with the exclusion of communities from the political and economic decisions even as these have a direct impact on their very lives. Several studies have found that the chemical pollution at the Vaal Triangle is responsible for the chronic illnesses of residents of surrounding areas, particularly of townships like Zamdela in Sasolburg, where black people live.
Despite the proliferation of these studies and even protests by environmental rights activists, our government continues to allow corporations to pollute the environment and literally, to kill black people.
But the poisoning of the air is not all that is happening in the Vaal. Last month, the SA Human Rights Commission launched an inquiry into the state of wastewater treatment in the Vaal River following many reports over the years about raw sewage flowing into homes and affected natural ecosystems that are dependent on the water in the Vaal and surrounding water resources.
The commission released its report which found that the lack of waste water treatment at the Vaal River was a violation of constitutional rights, including the rights to human dignity. The constitution makes it clear that people have the right to an environment that is not harmful to their health and well-being as well as the right to not be deprived of water and social security.
All these and more are violated by the reality of sewage that is spilling into people’s homes and on the streets where their children play. More than this, about 45% of Gauteng’s population depend on the Vaal River for drinking water. The situation in the Vaal River is thus not only a violation of human rights but also a direct threat to the very lives of people in this province.
The commission’s report correctly laid the blame at the feet of national government, which it found to have not held the Emfuleni municipality accountable for this pollution despite the ability to do so. It also found that service providers who did not deliver on work they were contracted to do in water treatment were paid despite non-delivery.
Our government and tenderpreneurs are placing the lives of our people at risk and there is an audible silence from all corners of our usually very reactive country.
Had all these been happening in predominantly white areas we would see political will to resolve the issues, but it is happening mainly to black people in the Vaal, and as we are constantly being shown, black lives do not matter.
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