The Kowie River Catchment Campaign’s (KCC) slogan, “working together for a healthy river catchment” encompasses everything that the KCC aims to achieve.
The campaign is a community environmental initiative which is led by volunteers under the auspices
of the Makana Environmental Forum.
The Kowie River Catchment Campaign’s (KCC) slogan, “working together for a healthy river catchment” encompasses everything that the KCC aims to achieve.
The campaign is a community environmental initiative which is led by volunteers under the auspices
of the Makana Environmental Forum.
The KCC deals with many different environmental issues such as water sanitation, the water supply crisis, water recycling and sewage leak hot spots.
However, their main concern is the high level of pollution found in the Kowie catchment area. The focus of this campaign is around Grahamstown as a considerable portion of the pollution of the Kowie River is caused by the Grahamstown community.
Every two months the KCC holds a meeting to discuss recent environmental issues, to keep in touch with one another as well as to ensure that the campaign is achieving its goals.
“I’ve learnt to be very patient.” says Nikki Köhly, the Rhodes Environmental Health and Safety Officer and Secretary of the KCC. “Even if you want to, you can’t move mountains in one meeting.
It is just a very long process.” Five members of the municipality, who serve fundamental roles in the success of the KCC, could not make it to the most recent meeting due to other municipal portfolio engagements.
This left a single municipal official, Kwanele Mbangi, the superintendent of the Parks and Recreation Department, and 16 members of the KCC gathered around a table to discuss the water issues of the new year.
There are three main goals for the KCC for the new year. These are to push the municipality to deal with water and sewage leakages throughout Grahamstown as well as to raise as much money as possible to produce water kits that would allow the community to test their own water.
Testing the aluminium levels of the Grahamstown water by an official laboratory is also a priority for the campaign.
One of the most important goals for the KCC is to effectively promote civic engagement so that every individual within the community does their bit.
“We have yet to figure out how to make it a part of our neighbourhood culture.” says Köhly. “Most people don’t even know that the streams are there to begin with.”
Among many accomplishments, the Kowie Campaign stands proud for the good working relationship they have with the municipality; the recent publishing of Lorraine Mullin’s book The History of Grahamstown’s water, their website; and the great network of individuals that are involved with the campaign.
Future KCC meetings will have to be rescheduled due to the ongoing clashes with municipal portfolio meetings to allow the campaign to operate as effectively as possible.
