SUSTAINABILITY SHOWCASE
Greening the ganglands
Tanya Petersen
3 October 2002
The Edith Stephens Wetland Park in in the Cape Flats, has gone from dangerous gangland to tranquil parkland. This transformation of a derelict urban wasteland took vision, courage and a lot of effort - and the results go far beyond aesthetics to the people who live nearby.
Life in the Cape Flats - a string of black and coloured settlements making up eastern metropolitan Cape Town - is a constant and often dangerous struggle. The area has the highest incidence of car hijackings in the city, it is pitifully poor, the landscape is scarred and industrial, and gang warfare and murder are rife. Unemployment here is the norm, not the exception.
Tranquil parkland
In the middle of this chaos is a patch of tranquil parkland. One of the few remnants of natural vegetation amongst an onslaught of urbanisation, the Edith Stephens Wetland Park is surrounded by the townships of Philippi, Hanover Park,
Gugulethu, Manenberg, and
Nyanga.
Although the park has existed for over 40 years, the tranquility is only new. Bought by prominent South African botanist Edith Stephens in the mid-1950s and donated to Cape Town's famous Kirstenbosch National Botanical Gardens to
protect the many endangered floral treasures that occur there, over the years the land became overgrown with 'alien' invasive plants.
The new scrubby bushes provided a perfect cover for crime. Gang members hid out and stashed their guns and drugs in the vegetation, rapes occurred regularly, and there was illegal dumping.
Table Mountain Fund
But thanks to a project funded primarily by the City of Cape Town and World Wildlife Fund - South Africa's Table Mountain Fund - this has all changed dramatically.
One of the first tasks of the project was to clear the land of the uninvited alien plants. With the 'aliens' gone, there was no longer anywhere for the gangsters to hide or conduct their
unsavoury business, and crime dropped substantially. The City of Cape Town led the regeneration of a small lake to which local birds now flock. So do residents.
From an initial 3.7 hectares, the park is now close to 40 hectares in size. A community and information centre has been built. Mzwandile Leon Peter, the park's on-site manager, says there have been inquiries about holding local weddings at the site. Community co-ordinated Sunday music concerts, picnics, and birdwatching are all also on the agenda. It's remarkable progress in just
over a year.
'Different perception'
Mzwandile Peter, who lives in the park with his wife and young daughter, says: "Before the land was cleared, people used to get robbed because it was an area where you could take advantage of anything, whether it's dumping, rapes, robberies, or even people just throwing dead animals away. Now there's a
different perception of this area."
"The most significant
change that we've managed to have is to get community buy in - to get the community to change their minds about this area, to say that this is not an area for housing or dumping but to look at this place as a conservation area", says Peter. "This is the key to this whole project."
Another branch of the project involves teaching horticultural skills and environmental awareness. Several schools work closely with the Edith Stephens Wetland Park and have established gardens within their own school grounds.
Ursula le Tape teaches biology and botany at Luhlaza High School. Just over 18 months ago she started working with her students to plant endangered endemic flowers and, on a more practical level, vegetables.
Environmental club
"So many people talk about gangsterism and drug abuse and all of that. I felt that
instead of talking about it, we needed to do something constructive and provide people with something to occupy themselves -
so I started with this environmental club", says Le Tape.
"The children are very very tired when they are finished in the garden - too tired to do anything naughty. I've got one boy who was a gangster, and he's a changed soul. These children, they are changing."
Brett Myrdal, who manages the Table Mountain Fund for WWF, agrees that the social aspect of any environmental programme in South Africa is crucial. Indeed, most biodiversity conservation projects have strong social development and poverty reduction components written into them.
"It does work", says Myrdal. "You find that first of all people become inspired simply by the fact of being out in nature. Next comes the camaraderie of working together, and then the skills of contracting and tendering they learn.
"For example, with alien clearing, the people become skilled to contract on further phases of environmental work, such as park management or in developing as guides in tourist operations - they
really become empowered to run their own businesses."
Dignity
Myrdal is also a huge fan of the Edith Stephens Wetland Park. "The six or so townships surrounding Edith Stephens have no open green spaces whatsoever. The areas have been planned without regard for people or their environment, but the park is bringing some dignity back to their living areas."
Comparisons with Kirstenbosch come up frequently in conversations with those involved in the project. Kirstenbosch is world-renowned for the beauty and diversity of the Cape flora it displays and for the magnificence of its setting
against the eastern slopes of Table Mountain.
The estate, covering more than 500 hectares, grows only indigenous South African plants and supports a diverse fynbos flora (the major vegetation type of the Cape Floral Kingdom) and natural forest. But for many years, under apartheid, access was for whites only.
Back at the Edith Stephens
Wetland Park, Mzwandile Peter is sitting with his daughter on one of the newly installed park benches overlooking the lake. He has a grand vision for the park and is confident of success.
"A lot of local people find this place to be almost like a 'white area' brought into a previously dangerous area", says Peter. "The change in perception has been tremendous.
"I hope that through this project we'll get interaction between the communities, get tourists in the area, and make this place one of the most important tourism attractions in Cape Town. This will be our Kirstenbosch in the Cape Flats."
Source: World Wildlife Fund
| 
