This is a piece of creative nonfiction which I wrote to submit to the Rachel Carson Centre’s Environmental Writing Competition, “Tell the Untold!” It reflects on the entanglements between the humans and environment of a city like Johannesburg, South Africa, through a reflection of my memories of the place.
Where does one find the environment in a city? In a city like Johannesburg, with its mining history and skyscrapers, it would seem that the encroachment of human habitation has progressively eradicated any signs of the environment. The city, etched on the rolling ridges of the Witwatersrand, is one defined by mine shafts penetrating deep into the Earth’s crust or mine dumps and buildings of glass and steel towering above. The vertical extent of Johannesburg perhaps matches its wide urban sprawl – from the lush suburbs in the north to the industrial east and the townships of Eldorado Park, Lenasia and Soweto further south. Johannesburg’s history is one of colonialism, capitalist exploitation, and apartheid.
How can there be any remnant of the environment in such a city engineered by imperialism? No doubt, the lush northern suburbs, home to one of the world’s largest urban forests, only represent more division of the haves and have-nots. Yet, my own memory tells a more complicated story. Indeed, I believe it to be a memory which confirms my suspicion – nature is encompassed of the complex entanglements between humans and the environment. This is a story sometimes good and sometimes bad. Humans can live in harmony with the non-human environment but humans can also destroy it for their own ends.
To discover this story of a complicated nature to be found in Johannesburg, I must traverse both space and time. Perhaps I should begin with the experience of every season – something that has changed over time. Spring is a wonderful time. In late-August, the flowers begin to bloom and the emptiness of winter is replaced by a nascent verdancy interspersed with bursts of colour, which lasts until late-April at least. It is around this time when the pollen will induce allergies or the brilliant Jacarandas will bloom. Of course, the brilliant violet-lined streets are something the wealthy get to enjoy the most as they drive past the towering Jacaranda trees or see their canopies from atop their many-storied homes.
While this bloom is short-lived, the bloom of jasmine, also in these northern suburbs, lasts until autumn. Their sweet scent was often my favourite part of driving on cool summer nights with my window rolled down. But, summers are otherwise not as peaceful as spring. In November, the afternoon thunderstorms begin. Scorching days give way to grey skies, pouring rain, and clapping thunder. Avid photographers often take pictures of these storms, capturing the Johannesburg skyline saturated with lightning strikes – a truly magnificent image. Nowadays, these storms seems to occur more at night than in the afternoon. Either way, the earthy smell of rain is always welcome. But, apart from making summer days more unbearable, is this change in rainfall a sign of changing times? Climate scientists would know better than I. Yet, at whatever time, errant lightning increasingly disrupts power supply when it strikes ageing power infrastructure. On a positive note, at least the rain no longer seems to cause floods – at least in Johannesburg. Though, I do fondly remember how I imagined the adventure of wading through murky water-logged streets as a child. Who would care for the state of the roads at that age? I only bothered about the heat radiating off the tar pavements with their interspersed weeds as I walked home from school.
There does seem to be one constant, amid changing seasons and climates. While the sky gets greyer with increasing pollution (a sign that you have returned to the city from a holiday at the coast), it still seems as vast and colourful when dusk sets in and the pinks, purples, and oranges frame the setting sun. While this seems constant, the lush green eventually fades with the arrival of the many-hewed autumn. Precipitation decreases, the sun rises later and sets earlier, and the cold begins to set in, making early mornings more difficult. Still, the warm colours of autumn leaves, mixed with the remnants of summer’s green makes for a colourful tapestry if one views the urban forest from atop the ridge on Munro Drive.
Yet, this colour quickly fades as winter approaches. The leaves become groundcover and the cold is accompanied by a crisp and dusty dryness inducing cracked hands, parched lips, and nosebleeds. I still think Johannesburg winters brings their own beauty. It is a novel experience to walk on the dew-covered grass on winter mornings, under the heat of the ever-present African sun. Also distinctly, the dry winters lend themselves to fires such that the nights may be smoky with the burning veld. This made it unlikely that us “Joburgers” would experience much snow though Johannesburg has experienced it. I remember at least three occasions. As a child, I remember waking up on what was probably a weekend to snow. This was the first time and was thus extremely exciting. But when the hot winter sun inevitably rose higher, the snow quickly melted and was all but gone by evening. The second instance was in August 2012. I was ill and as a result at home from boarding school. For the second time, I awoke to snow. Though ill, and less mesmerised, I did take a picture in it. Still, it too very quickly melted. The third time was more recent – somewhere in the last 5 years, though the years have been a blur with the COVID-19 pandemic. It snowed in some parts of Johannesburg but not where I stayed in Crosby – an old white suburb for those working on the railways. Incidentally, this was not 5km from where gold was purportedly first discovered on a farm in Langlaagte in 1886.
While memories of snow in Johannesburg may be rare, there are a lot more memories associated with the environment in the city. These are not tied to seasons and are more personal so they may not be shared by every city-dweller. This only convinces me that we all find the environment in our own way.
For me, insects and birds are a strong reminder of nature in the city. I think this is especially because I have been abroad to Europe and America and somehow found both to be strangely devoid of the teeming life I have seen in Johannesburg. I am sure this is not the case all over Europe and America, but it does make me think of the distinctive animal life of Johannesburg.
There is one particularly ugly creature unique to Johannesburg which I still have some deep-seated fear for. Parktown prawns – a strange creature resembling a prawn and named for the area in which it is most commonly found. They are also known to emit a dreadful inky liquid as a defence-mechanism, though I cannot say I have ever seen this. But, while I did not grow up in Parktown – where many a gold-prospecting Randlord’s mansion can be found – I remember digging in freshly-watered dirt and unearthing these terrifying subterranean dwellers. This seemed to forever put me off gardening, or digging at the very least.
Less disturbing but perhaps as irksome are the Christmas beetles. Seemingly drawn to especially the lushest of gardens, they search for light around the hot Christmas season. Often, they thus enter through open windows and doors at night, only to haphazardly fly all over. Unfortunately, I also have knowledge of their extremely hardy texture from the many hapless beetles I have accidently stepped on. But neither Christmas beetles nor Parktown prawns are as numerous and irksome as moths and mosquitoes. Certainly not unique to Johannesburg, moths seem to be as confused as Christmas beetles. Yet the mosquitoes take the crown for being the most menacing. I am sure the disdain for the mosquito’s drone and nasty bites are shared by many. Summer is thus a time when I love the hot outdoors and the torrential rainfall. However, summer nights are dreadful if open windows have let any mosquitoes in. I wonder if fellow humans in Europe and America are as menaced by mosquitoes? I certainly doubt they have felt the large red ants biting their feet while visiting in a local park wearing only flip flops…
There are other creatures far more innocent than the vicious Parktown prawns or the blood-sucking mosquitoes. Around Crosby, or Westdene and Melville, I have occasionally seen bunnies roaming the street. Growing up, this would only be seen at the Bunny Park where one could pay to see and feed bunnies. I doubt the street-roaming variety are native to the Johannesburg ecosystem but they are welcome nevertheless. Just as welcome as the hadedas. These large grey birds make loud sounds especially in the mornings but fortuitously feed on Parktown prawns, or so I am told. I have also recently begun to notice many starlings with brilliant coats of many colours in the light which seem to frequent my home and its many trees on the foot of the Melville Koppies – a nature reserve of an ancient ecosystem in the middle of the city. The Koppies also seem to draw in a lot of scorpions. I cannot say I know much about them except that they are very defensive when I have tried to sweep them back outside.
But hadedas and starlings are only some amongst many birds, including the occasional owl and woodpecker, which I have seen or heard in the city. While I am not an avid bird watcher, the sound of birds chirping early in the morning – especially when I have stayed up all night reading – is a comforting sound. And, like any city, Johannesburg is full of pigeons. Though, like many other city-dwellers, I do not enjoy this particular avian species.
For the remainder of my memories, there is no anchor – neither season nor species – except that I have mined them from the many fond memories of my childhood. One of these does relate to a bird. When I was in Grade 4, I went to a school in Crosby. Because Crosby is set on a steep hill, each road going further south is progressively lower. This meant that the school, spanning 3 blocks from north to south, and built to be perfectly flat, towered above the houses at its most southern point. As such, the school playground, lined on its southern end with a row of trees, also seemed high above the entire south of Johannesburg which it overlooked. Early in the year during Grade 4 (probably February), I was playing in these trees. It was always great fun because, from here, I could see the great yellow mine dumps in the south of Johannesburg near Gold Reef City – a gold-mining themed amusement park and casino. It was fun to see the turning Ferris wheel while at school, imagining that though it was a school-day, someone was having fun. It is strange how gold always seems to come up in my memory of Johannesburg. In any case, one day, I found a bird’s nest with an egg in it. Intrigued, I returned every morning to see it, hoping to witness it hatching. On a morning a few days later, I arrived to see that it had hatched – nature at work.
As is perhaps evident, I liked to escape the mundanity of school and city-life by imagining that I was off somewhere else. In Grade 1, while at another school, I similarly found myself in the trees and bushes. Imagining that I was an adventurer, perhaps in the Amazon rainforest, I would make my way through these bushes, slashing my imaginary machete ahead of me. Now, I do similar things, but instead admire the plant life. At that same school, there were large trees – the name of which I still do not know – which dropped large sweet-smelling leaves and furry spheres. These spheres, if put in someone’s socks or down someone’s shirt or pants, resulted in immense itching – something we discovered to be of great utility in our schoolyard pranks.
I could probably think of a dozen more instances where I either sought out the environment or it features quite centrally in my memories. However, without mentioning every instance, these show how central the environment is to human life even in the middle of the city. To reiterate, the nature is everywhere because it is the ever-changing interaction between all life-forms and the environment. For instance, I could once see the stars brightly shining in the sky. Then the growth in city lights dimmed their brightness. But the frequent power cuts and faulty streetlights across Johannesburg seems to have returned the lustre to those stars – at least in some places.
We all experience this nature and environment differently. I have only recounted some of my experiences which speak to my finding of the environment in Johannesburg. No doubt, if we speak to others, we will find more of it. For some it may be found in the deliberate attempts to bring the environment into the city – the urban forest, the green belt, the parks and nature reserves. These are beautiful, no doubt, but so are the other sites of nature. Hence for others, they are the memories, the seasons, the insects, the birds, and the mine dumps – with trees growing on them and no doubt fostering millions of teeming life-forms. But the environment must surely change – whether with humans or without. The mine dumps – iconic symbols of Johannesburg’s mining history – are being removed. Perhaps someone in Grade 4 now won’t know where Gold Reef City is. Perhaps the memory of the gold mines fade entirely just as the birds and insects living there lose their habitats, which were never there in the first place. That is the cycle of a changing nature. That is the environment. The only constant is change. As we face a changing environment and a world of climate change and environmental degradation, perhaps we should remember that nature is found in change. Perhaps the changes to come are not all destructive. For now, the environment lives on in these memories, many rapidly fading, now only surviving in grey matter, triggered now and then by a passing smell or sensation of a time now gone.
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