Weep on the banks of Joburg’s Jukskei River

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From the banks of the Jukskei River, our panicked eyes scan the raging black waters. The bodies of worshippers are submerged like tonnes of debris that live in the Johannesburg river. One moment the congregants were in a rapture being dunked in the river with the promise they will emerge cleansed from this baptism. They did not emerge alive.

It would be days before their swollen waterlogged bodies were found and hauled out of the satiated waters. Families and other people lined the banks of the Jukskei and hope faded to mourning. Weeping rent the silence of the riverbank. As the waters slowed down their dizzying speed, anxious onlookers began to make out shapes and colours. Perhaps the white and green of the robes worn by worshippers. Rescue service people wade through the waters looking for bodies. 

The litter of the Jukskei is a shape-shifting phenomenon. There are dark ominous patches of water and then the sun shines and the water gleams. There are many false alarms. Perhaps a body but also a tyre, a washbasin or a garbage bag. Yellow for Shoprite. A dog’s carcass on a deathly voyage through Johannesburg. Slowly, rescue services pick out the bodies. 

The storms that lambast the Gauteng Highveld at this time of the year swell rivers and drainage pipes and catch us by surprise. The roar of water sounds its alarm on our doorsteps. Roofs groan under the weight of angry water. Those who live downstream and are often ignored by municipal services are swept away in the angry waters. 

In one of the world’s most unequal cities, the Jukskei tells an interesting tale. The river has an unlikely source in Bertrams, in central Johannesburg, and feeds into the Crocodile River mouth. Its path through Sandton and its suburbs is simultaneously beautiful and ugly. 

Tranquil in Sandton and Midrand, and filthy and ominously dangerous through Alexandra township, Sandton’s backside. It is here that it created another round of havoc on an early December Sunday, while a pastor put his congregants through their final test. Rebirth through death. 

But if we look past the pollution and danger, the Jukskei serves an important function for the city’s spiritual communities that worship by open waters. Throughout sub-Saharan Africa, African spiritualists worship next to rivers, streams and oceans. 

But because Johannesburg has very few rivers and water masses, we gather at the Jukskei. We are baptised and reborn in the waters of the Jukskei. When we wade through the water, we reconnect with water spirits and for a moment we may be transported to Lake Malawi, the Mzimvubu River, the healing waters of Cancele near Mount Frere in the Eastern Cape, and the ancestral oceans of Mozambique. 

For a moment, we may be in communion with the Nyami Nyami, the Zambezi River God. Here on the Highveld, the Jukskei has become our holy river. We live out our rhythms and rituals in its dark waters that stand in for our ancestral lakes, oceans and rivers.  

The Jukskei is also our dump site. In Alexandra, the waste accumulates faster than the city cares to collect it. The river bank becomes a trash can and doubles as an ablution site. As housing space runs out, we erect our homes on spindly poles on the banks of the Jukskei. 

In the dry months, the river is a tame trickle that shrinks shyly into herself. Children play and dogs hunt for scraps. But the Jukskei can be transformed overnight. Hard rain upstream can flood the river and fill it with the suddenness of an earthquake. A quiet Sunday morning can be transformed into riotous mourning. 

The spirit world does not always align with the common-sense universe. Preachers and pastors can lead us into still waters where we might not otherwise tread. They command us in the spirit and we obey. We walk into swelling waters in search of healing, forgetting, realising dreams, blessings and a change in fortune. 

To touch our dreams we surrender common sense. We might not be able to swim, but superpowers promised by pastors and faith make us believe. We plunge in faith but the Jukskei might test our belief with a strong current. And like tree stumps and sewage, we may soon be submerged in the speeding current. 

Legs trapped in flowing robes, we are soon part of the Jukskei’s flotsam. The pastor remains on the banks without congregants. He yells into the roaring river. The spirits have gone. He remains unheard. 

We will not stop treading the waters of the Jukskei. We follow a faith of water spirits more ancient than the city. We are drawn to the water. We are promised rest when we lay down our burdens by the riverside. We are told that we will emerge renewed and less weary. We will continue to die with the hope of renewal. 

Rescue services will find us beached on distant banks or floating with the litter under overhanging trees that line the Jukskei. Regulating churches to compel us to be baptised with cups of water in church buildings is to work against ancient practices. It will not succeed. We are beckoned by open waters. Our renewal is entwined with river spirits. 

What is to be done? The drownings teach us many lessons. Perhaps the most tragic is that there are bodies that do not matter. This is yet another episode of black death in the long night of weeping mothers. 

After the rescue workers complete their thankless task of combing for corpses, we will return to our lives and journalists will be sent to the next tragedy and to Nasrec where our government officials will be jostling for positions oblivious to the smell of death in the air. 

But there are more urgent tasks. We need to care for our rivers. The Jukskei should not be used as an illegal dumping site. Like us in suburbia, the people of Alexandra township deserve a clean environment where they can worship with dignity. 

The year 2022 was one of high drama in the city council chambers. Mayors have come and gone in bruising battles. Power struggles in council chambers mean that services have been hobbled. Places like Alexandra have degenerated on our collective watch. 

Rubbish is dumped illegally on the banks of the river in Alexandra township. (Gulshan Khan/AFP)

Since anti-poor governance is the order of the day, the ballot box does not hold the key to a cleaner Jukskei. Care for the working-class people of the city is not on the ANC or any opposition party’s agenda. We have to imagine care more broadly if any of us are to survive this bleak season of an absent state. 

The ability to swim is an important survival skill. Many of us are unable to swim. There are few safe facilities and most community swimming pools have long closed down. What would it mean to see swimming not as a luxury but as crucial for living? 

Might this mean that it is not entrusted to the inept sports and culture ministry and seen as cross-cutting — as a social, recreational and safety issue? If our spiritual lives require us to wade through rivers and thread dangerous waters, the ability to swim becomes an urgent and compelling matter. 

As I write this piece, it is raining in Johannesburg and a three-month-old baby is still missing, more than a week since it disappeared on the day of its baptism. Fifteen bodies have been found in the long week of searching. The search party has moved across into Sandton. 

Our vehicles purr along Katherine and Grayston drives. Captains of industry and politicians are whisked past the scene of subjection, heads preoccupied with money and power. If we turn our heads, we may see the Johannesburg emergency services wading through the Jukskei, weary eyes combing the water, hoping to see the body of an infant child. 

A mother sits on a mat, legs stretched in front of her on the cold floor. She is torn between hope and mourning. She has not stopped weeping since her baby was wrenched from her arms. Her breasts swell with milk. There is no relief to the pain in her chest. Both on its surface and deep down in her core. In the distance, the Jukskei glistens wearily through the shimmer of the rain. 

Hugo ka Canham is a writer and professor of psychology. His book, Riotous Deathscapes, will be available from Duke University Press in 2023. He writes in his personal capacity.

The views expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official policy or position of the Mail & Guardian.