Community Connection Online Event

Bringing together scientists, academics, activists, city councillors, community members and artists who engage with the watery bodies around Cape Town, the first online Water Stories Community Connection was co-hosted by Mycelium Media Colab and Environmental Humanities South (UCT) on July 1st 2022. Our aim is to create opportunities for connection and collaboration between the individuals and organisations we have engaged with over the last two and half years in developing waterstories.co.za, and with all fellow water protectors.

A diverse mix of passionate people spent their Friday afternoon taking part and contributing, despite load shedding power cuts in many areas which prevented some from attending, or staying connected throughout. Thank you to all those who shared their stories, what they’re working on, their needs and upcoming events. We were delighted to welcome three members of the Mayoral Advisory Committee on Water Quality in Wetlands and Waterways in the City of Cape Town, Councillors Maryam Manuel and Alex Lansdowne, and Caroline Marx, an activist dedicated to the restoration of Milnerton Lagoon. Participants also included Traci Kwaai, a storyteller and guide from Kalk Bay who connects with her heritage and fishing rights; researchers who are working on understanding the full extent of chemical pollution of water and biodiversity, as well as all aspects of water pollution and management, and activists who work tirelessly in their communities to raise flags about pollution, share information and get things done.

“…We swim, we dive and explore the world below.
And with each wade into shallow waters
with each deep breath held long
we remember to ask
who walks with us
who swims with us
who breathes with us?”

Excerpt from Toni Stuart’s poem Ocean Home

Water Stories as a storytelling platform, grew out of collaborative work between teams led by Professor Leslie Petrik from Environmental Nano Sciences in the Department of Chemistry at UWC, principal investigator of the SANOcean Project, and Professor Lesley Green from Environmental Humanities South (EHS) at UCT. Acting Director Dr Nikiwe Solomon highlighted the goal of the water portfolio in EHS as “creating a lively space where we can speak about regeneration, where we can think about redress, about justice, about collective activism and building a bigger movement around the waters of Cape Town.”

To create a holistic picture of the city’s watery landscape, providing context and useful information, we have mapped water bodies, pollution points, water access and activism stories, artistry and practical ideas on how to be an active water protector. It is an evolving and growing space, where we envisage a sharing of stories from activists, organisations, research and public institutions around the urgent need to address environmental contamination and supporting an ethic of care within the water sector. A central theme and question is — what do we mean by Water Commons, especially in the face of global and local commodification of water?

Nikiwe Solomon kicked things off with an overview of the water portfolio at EHS:
“Within the water portfolio, we have supported students that are working on a broad number of issues… looking at people’s relationships to wetlands, looking at the aquifer… what does the aquifer have to say about how it’s being engaged with? We’re working with wetlands in Zimbabwe, and also looking at multi-species interactions in these water spaces… And then we also have Faith (Gara) who’s working on looking at what kind of designs do we need for the future, the city design in relation to making them water sensitive and livable neighbourhoods in the kind of futures we’re looking at.

…how do we get people to care more about this resource outside of, you know, the economic framing? Looking at it beyond just extractive relationships, how do we get people to connect more? And how do we imagine seeing our waterways, in light of what happened in 2017 and 2018 with the Day Zero looming on us, and in other parts of the country, Day Zero is nearing. So how do we imagine our rivers in the context of such severe droughts? We have climate change issues that we’re dealing with unpredictable weather patterns. So imagine if we could go to the river to collect water rather than standing, waiting for water from a water tank under military guard? So how can we reimagine these relationships to our waterways? And how do we approach this as a collective?”

Everyone contributed to a shared virtual ‘whiteboard’ bringing their personal water story, issues that should be highlighted, and ideas to empower different communities to amplify their water narrative. Here is a taste of what was harvested:

““This is False Bay. This is the Bay of slavery and escape.
This is the Bay of railway lines. This is the Bay of shipwrecks and fishermen.
This is the bay of forced removals. This is the Bay of tidal pools for ‘whites only’.
This is the bay where Kwa Mata sleeps.“

Excerpt from Toni Stuart’s poem Ocean Home

Some of the stories and ideas spoken into the space included contributions from the following people:

Traci Kwaai

Activist, creative, storyteller and creator of The Fisher Child Project and Walk of Remembrance in Kalk Bay

“I’m a sixth generation fisher-child from Kalk Bay, my family have lived in Kalk Bay for over 200 years. And we are still here. We’ve lived through slavery, we’ve lived through Apartheid, Group Areas Slums Act, and a third of my community still lives here. Today, I lead a walk of remembrance, which I’ve been doing for a year and a half, and I tell stories of my community. So they are stories about the people who live in Kalk Bay. Most people come to Kalk Bay, and they just romanticize about the boats, and they go for fish and chips at Kalkies or local cafe for coffee, and they don’t actually even realize that there’s a community that exists there, that is the first community that… Kalk Bay wouldn’t exist without them, there wouldn’t be a harbor without the fishemen. I tell stories because there’s no fish. There’s no fish left. There are not many fishermen and skippers in my community any more. Due to lots of things, environmental impact, quotas from the government, to the fact that there’s no fish.”

Maryam Salie

Founder of the Sandvlei United Community Organisation (SUCO) in Macassar, City of Cape Town councillor, member of the CoCT Water and Sanitation Portfolio Committee, and Mayoral Advisory Committee on Water Quality in Wetlands and Waterways in the City of Cape Town

“I’ve worked on the Kuils (RIver), and founded an organization called SUCO… Kuils at the time was very highly polluted. So going from going from a river that polluted, and it looked like there was just absolutely no hope… from failing wastewater treatment plants to upstream pollution — it just basically settled in our community and further down. I found myself in a space with like-minded individuals and colleagues. We went from fighting the city of Cape Town, and actually to be frank, fighting the City of Cape Town, fighting the pollution, fighting the ‘man out there’, and just looking for solutions. And just when we all gave up, there was some hope, where we had a bio-remediation project, I lead that project. I had to think outside the box, I had to come to a space where I was, like, what can I do? And how do we look at this from a different angle?”

Caroline Marx

Water Activist, Milnerton; member of Mayoral Advisory Committee on Water Quality in Wetlands and Waterways in the City of Cape Town

“ I accidentally became a water activist, because of the pollution in our local river, the Diep River and the Milnerton lagoon. I’ve been challenging this for about six to seven years, have heard many plans and promises. And unfortunately, the situation continued to decline… So eventually, about two and a half years ago, I was able to get the assistance of OUTA, the Organization Undoing Tax Abuse, to help me cover the cost of independent water testing, to prove that there is a problem, and also the support of the legal team. … And what’s become more and more clear to me is how important networking events like this one are, to further the understanding of each other’s problems and viewpoints, and also to share resources.”

Asemahle Sibango

Master’s student at Environmental Humanities South, UCT.

“I’m a student from the Environmental Humanities currently writing my thesis. I work with the Khayelitsha Wetlands Park. I am trying to understand diverse ways of knowing care, of practicing care. So I’m listening to people’s stories and their multi-species stories that live with the Khayelitsha Wetlands Park — how do they practice care for the wetland?

Because when I read the City of Cape Town plans and strategies, and National wetland strategies, they are mostly informed by economic purposes, which is ecotourism. And the solutions that they implement or the strategies that they implement to take care of wetlands are mostly technoscience. And it’s mostly controlling… it’s cement… and the stories that people live with in the spaces, of how they understand and how they practice care, are often overlooked. So I’m trying to verbalize their voices, how they understand care, how they practice care.”

Klaudia Schachtschneider

Manager — Water Stewardship Programme at WWF-SA

“I’m in the freshwater team in WWF, and in Cape Town, we specifically look at groundwater. And that is obviously that something that came out of the Day Zero period when there was so much groundwater drilling going on. We were starting to wonder, do we even know if that water use is sustainable or not? There were actually gaps in knowledge. And that is really a story where we started exploring and trying to understand if we can build a monitoring network, with communities and citizen science involvement and volunteers to put loggers down in various neighborhoods, and to then kind of grow that data and put it onto a dashboard, where it is publicly visible for everybody.

View and explore the WWF Table Mountain Water Source Partnership Dashboard

These are just a few excerpts from a rich tapestry of stories and projects shared at the event. If you are interested, you can explore more of the contributions here.

There is great will and a lot of passion around cleaning, restoring and protecting our waterbodies (including our own human water-bodies) in Cape Town. Amongst the stories shared a strong theme of walking by rivers and waterbodies, swimming in the ocean, engaging with nature and protecting life emerged. Everyone was there because they care deeply as water and nature custodians, protectors and activists — can we continue to create safe spaces for each other to share our stories, to listen, to hear and to acknowledge? And how can we translate these into action and support in the real world?

These are some regenerative conversations that we would like to take forward in a series of in-person and online events over the coming months:

What is our shared vision of a healthy city, ecologically and socially? How do we work from a mindset in which ecological conservation / restoration and human rights are integrated? Where are the models, diagrams, artists’ impressions, creativity?

Can we have generative conversations about hot button topics and use of words like “land invasions” and “vagrancy”? What does “development” mean and to whom? If we change our language can we change the story?

What does Water as Commons mean? How can this be practiced in our communities and city?

Please do be in touch with feedback, suggestions and questions at hello@waterstories.co.za