VIDEO: SDCEA reflects on 25-year milestone
To commemorate, staff gathered at the Nelson Mandela Rock, at the corner of Austerville Drive and Quality Street in Wentworth.
TWENTY-FIVE years ago, along with the dawn of a new democracy, an environmental justice group was established.
A single person’s quest for quality breathable air began the proverbial thousand-mile journey. What started off with a single document in the advocacy for a better quality of life is now a household movement.
Reflecting on the years, South Durban Community Environmental Alliance’s co-ordinator, Desmond D’Sa, said the group was mostly white people with a male majority and just one woman.
“Today, we have changed completely in terms of race, creed and colour. We have every race and religious group. That’s taken a lot of work over the years because, predominantly, teaching and educate people takes time, especially when people were not taught about environmental justice in schools.”
“We were all taught about nature in school but beyond that, about the human factor and the impact that it has on their well being and the quality of life, absolutely nothing was taught in schools,” he said.
November 25 last year marked the organisation’s crown birthday milestone.
To commemorate, staff gathered at the Nelson Mandela Rock, at the corner of Austerville Drive and Quality Street in Wentworth on Monday, 15 February.
The symbolic rock came from the Valley of a Thousand Hills and was put up and launched by the organisation.
“When we heard that the former president Nelson Mandela was visiting the Engen refinery on 15 March 1995, we seized the opportunity and quickly mobilised the community under the banner of the Wentworth Development Forum and brought people to meet president Nelson Mandela and his entourage at the gates of the refinery on Tara Road.
“President Mandela, displaying the humility he was known for, stopped to hear our concerns when he saw us. It was a turning point for us – for the first time, someone in leadership had wanted to genuinely hear about the challenges in our community from us ordinary folk,” D’Sa recalled.
“We celebrate this milestone of 25 years of existence at a time when the enormity of the work we have done over the two-and-a-half decades, and continue to do, has become all the more relevant because of the climate crisis and the Covid-19 pandemic.”
“Twenty-five years ago, SDCEA brought together a diverse group of citizens from the South Durban Basin. People divided along racial, ideological and economic lines. But their differences aside, these communities were united in their common suffering from the high levels of toxic pollutants in their neighbourhoods.”
“They shared, too, the impact of this pollution on their health, and the resultant high rates of cancer, leukaemia and asthma prevalent in their communities.”
Twenty-five years later, SDCEA still continues to lobby for a safe and clean environment and for equality for all people.
For more information visit www.sdcea.co.za or like their Facebook page SDCEA NGO.
