‘Criminal’ that Rooiwal’s upgrade comes at the cost of lives

The unbearable stench of sewage hangs over a portion of Andre Louwrens’s farm in Vastfontein, north of Pretoria. The culprit looms less than a kilometre away — the dysfunctional Rooiwal wastewater treatment works, which is run by the City of Tshwane. 

Rooiwal has been linked to the outbreak of cholera in nearby Hammanskraal, which has killed about 30 people in the large semi-rural community, in recent weeks. The bacterial disease is usually spread through contaminated water.

Louwrens’s irrigation water is supplied from outlet water from Rooiwal. “This is what the water looks like,” he said, gesturing to furrows on his farm coated with black sewage and filled with sickly-grey water, teeming with human excrement. “I’m irrigating with that water. And, that is what the people of Hammanskraal are expected to drink,” he said, shaking his head. “Would you drink that water?” 

Over the years, he has built a series of containment dams to reduce the black slurry entering his waterways. Since 2006, all the fish in his dams have been wiped out, while his crop yields have declined constantly and his soil health has deteriorated. His groundwater has been unusable for about 15 years. 

“Crops don’t grow like they’re supposed to. I’ve had to apply maybe twice the amount of chemicals to keep the plants healthy and to keep off pathogens.”

Louwrens’s farm is among about 80 agricultural properties in the Apies River area which are irrigated from the polluted river.

“There’s nothing left. The whole place has just been poisoned and destroyed. Our soils have been polluted … I haven’t actually planted any crops that are freshly eaten on this specific farm because I’m scared of the sewage and poisoning people … 

“All along the Apies River, it just stinks for a kilometre left and for a kilometre right. You kind of grow used to the smell. But if you leave here and you go to the Kolonnade [Shopping Centre] and come back, you’re hit with the sewage bomb.” 

Widespread pollution

While the precise source of the cholera infection has not been located, according to the department of water and sanitation, it’s possible that the outbreak in Hammanskraal is related to the pollution of water sources in the area from the Rooiwal wastewater treatment works. 

Situated upstream of Hammanskraal, the plant has not been well maintained for many years and has insufficient capacity to deal with the volume of wastewater entering the works, it said. Rooiwal is polluting the Apies River, which flows into the Leeukraal Dam, from which water is taken by the city’s Temba water treatment works. 

Temba is supposed to clean the raw water from the dam and treat it so that it is fit for human consumption. But the water in the dam is so polluted that Temba is not able to treat it so that it meets the required standards for drinking water, the department said.

‘Avoidable’ deaths

The Scientific Advisory Group on Emergencies (Sage), which is housed within the Academy of Science of South Africa, said the cholera-related deaths in Gauteng, centred in Hammanskraal, the Free State and Mpumalanga, were avoidable. 

“While the source of Hammanskraal’s deadly outbreak is yet to be established, Sage takes the position that several factors have likely contributed to the outbreak, including dysfunctional wastewater treatment facilities,” Sage’s sub-committee on water security and water quality said. 

It concurred with department officials that the poor quality of water in Hammanskraal is probably due to the failure of Rooiwal. 

“Sage is of the opinion that the loss of lives to cholera in Hammanskraal was avoidable and is symptomatic of a widening collapse of water treatment facilities, countrywide. Left unchecked, such an unfolding collapse could precipitate multiple concurrent health and environmental emergencies.” 

Given the scale of the task at hand and its limited budget, the department should prioritise the urgent remediation of dysfunctional and failing wastewater treatment plants, nationally, with the Water Partnership Office, it said. This was established by the department with the Development Bank of Southern Africa and the South African Local Government Association in August last year to serve as a “special purpose vehicle” to facilitate partnerships and manage joint accounts for specific funding for projects implemented through public-private collaboration in the water and sanitation sector.

Little hope

While the department and the city recently explained how their joint project to resolve Hammanskraal’s water problems is taking shape centred on the full rehabilitation and upgrade of Rooiwal by 2026 — pegged at R4 billion — Louwrens doesn’t hold out much hope. 

“A few years ago, there was a catastrophic failure of Rooiwal,” he said. “Everything shut down, nothing was working and the Apies River just filled up with deep, dark, black sewage for a month. 

“Some guy got a contract at Rooiwal; the work wasn’t finished and the money is gone,” he said, referring to companies linked to state capture-implicated businessman Edwin Sodi. “They know who it is, yet nobody gets thrown in prison and there’s no accountability. Yet our own people, born and raised here, are dying in hospital from cholera.” 

His neighbour Theuns Vogel said a wide swathe of agricultural properties and local businesses are affected by Rooiwal’s pollution, which is contaminating the Apies River, groundwater and the surrounding landscape, with partially treated, but mostly raw, sewage.

Among them is Marlene de Meyer, who runs a wedding venue on the banks of the Apies River. 

“We’ve got a little restaurant over the water,” she said. “We get water supply from the Apies … we can’t pump water because there’s too much sewage in it and, at nighttime, it smells like hell … It is a problem, we are a wedding venue, so it’s not always a nice smell for the brides coming down the aisle.” 

‘Vrot water’

Vogel said the water supply in the Apies River area has been unusable for almost 13 years because it has been contaminated by sewage being pumped into the water supply, including the rivers, dams and underground water, around Rooiwal. 

“The contaminated water has caused major damage to the affected area, especially to myself. I have lost numerous yields of crops and animals,” he said. Before last year, Vogel lost 17 cattle to the sewage contamination. 

Crops used for human consumption cannot be grown here and the Tshwane Market does not accept crops irrigated with wastewater, he said. Alongside this, water in sludge-filled dams cannot be used for irrigation as the pumps are unable to get the water out. 

“In addition to the poor smell, we are also constantly exposed to methane gas, a health risk and a degrading impact on infrastructure …. I have headaches every morning and sinus problems at night because of the methane and the ammonia.” 

Their property values have plummeted. “I’m 70, I have to sell my other farm just to survive here. And I’m not going to leave here without anything … No one will buy a farm with a borehole not working because it’s poisoned.”

The department declared the Apies River a disaster area in 2011 because of the widespread contamination. 

“The poor people who buy vegetables, they don’t know about this vrot water, in terms of their health,” said Vogel’s wife, Hannetjie, explaining that many local farmers had no choice but to irrigate from the Apies.

For Vogel, the plans to upgrade and refurbish Rooiwal “will happen because all the eyes of the country and the world” are on the plant, he said. 

“All my problems start with Rooiwal and all of Hammanskraal’s problems start with Rooiwal. If it wasn’t for people dying of cholera, that water problem in Hammanskraal would never be solved. People died and it was the only way for this plant to now get fixed. 

“This has cost people their lives and that is criminal.”