IDEX Program Officers, Kat and Vini are on field visits in South Africa to research groups IDEX could support through our catalyst grants program.

We spent South Africa's election day in South Durban's industrial wasteland with the South Durban Community Environmental Alliance (SDCEA). SDCEA was founded in 1996 as a coalition of communities working for environmental justice in South Durban and beyond.

We met with Desmond D'Sa, SDCEA’s director, who shared stories of protests, actions and campaigns; we were devastated and inspired at the same time. 52% of all children in South Durban have asthma. Absentee rates at the schools in the area are over 40% due to respiratory illness. Cancer rates are higher than any other single geographic area in the province.

From a hilltop in the middle of South Durban, which is home to 300,000 people, we saw heavy industries spewing waste into the ocean and the air. The industries generate 40 million Rand in profit each day, and there is little incentive for the government to move them.

South Africa’s largest landfill site was also in this area. It finally closed last year as a result of public pressure. Until then, the landfill received contaminated waste from hospitals, including needles and industrial waste. The landfill was next door to a semi-rural area in a black township.

Desmond told us that until last year, children played on the landfill. There are no records of how many kids died but community reports indicates many are still sick. SDCEA gather evidence and generates reports to mobilize community and policymakers. He took us to a previously white owned area where a petrol leak sprung up a few years ago. Overnight residents fled but the oil company preserved the homes in the hope that up and coming middle class blacks would move in… and they did. People are still living on oil pipelines, over contaminated soil.

Desmond showed us incredible photographs documenting over ten years of tireless work. But his greatest pride is a curriculum of books developed for township schools to teach about environmental justice.

Mrs. Gawanda lives in South Durban, in public housing with her husband and 5 grandchildren. She told us that all of her grandchildren except one have asthma and other respiratory illnesses. Yet health care is hard to come by; the nearest clinic is a 2-hour bus ride away, and medication is not available in regular supply. But Mrs. Gawanda calls herself a fighter. She is at every action meeting to demand an accessible clinic and clean air in her neighborhood. "I do this for my grandkids. That's why I can’t stop", she says.

More information on S. African's environmental justice movement is also available from another organization we visited: Groundwork.

Labels: environmental justice, SDCEA, South Africa

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