BEHIND THE NEWS | Stomach flu and sewage spills: my first month as a journalist

I am not a stranger to the crumbling beauty of BCM.

My father, Mike Loewe, grew from hooligan to surfer to activist on these potholed streets.

This year it was my turn to test the waters.

My arsenal is the arts.

An honours degree from UCT in theatre and performance honed skills in research, investigation, and keeping a cool head when the s*** hits the fan.

My second week in East London was just that.

I, the fool with a digestive tract used to Cape Town’s so-called cleanliness, drank the tap water and suffered from the stomach flu of a thousand terrible toilet moments.

My grand entrance into the newsroom lasted one week.

I spent my 27th birthday in a ball in bed, seeking relief from a GP who I think saved me from going to hospital before my medical aid had kicked in.

“It’s the tap water, don’t drink it,” she said.

A light went off in my newly birthed journalism brain and I thought, “but why not?”

As with any hunch, the first port of call isn’t your editor, chief reporter, or mentor father, but rather East London Facebook groups.

If you ever need a tailor, a place to live or advice on how to handle the city, may I recommend the East London Girls Group? No boys allowed.

The mysterious stomach flu had members of the women’s group seeking solidarity in comments, questions, and community. 

“My whole family has been sick for two weeks!”

Another asked: “Is it the water? I don’t know whether to drink the tap water or not?”

Back in the office, a few kilograms lighter but determined to punch my way back, we received a tip about a vandalised sewage treatment works in Mdantsane.

My partner for my first experience in the field was photographer and gardening enthusiast Mike Pinyana.

As Pinyana drove, he told me about the art of capturing life in action, and how his neighbour’s goats ate his prized black garlic.

“This could be like, a really big deal hey?” My anxiety peppered Pinyana with questions as we waited for our contact in the parking lot.

A white bakkie flashed its lights at us, and we followed.

I kept having to remind myself this was legal and I wasn’t about to enter a meth lab in the desert.

The plant squatted between two large hills outside Mdantsane. It was a sad sight. It seemed remote, inert, forgotten.

“It’s been like this for two months,” our contact told us.

He said all the electrical copper wires had been dug up and transformers stolen in November.

“The dams are green, nothing is working, the sewage is just going through one end and coming out the other,” the source said.

I could relate.

We drove through the open gate — was there a gate? — and saw no-one. The office door was shut up and sloping down the plant, a gaping vein in the earth. Evidence of major theft.

Cows grazed on the long grass in between the treatment weirs. Bovine bliss.

We walked the entire plant, clocking the movement of the effluent through a complex of 40 big and small tanks. Aerators were at a standstill.

We were surprised to find the final exit point for the “treated” effluent appeared to be a small river below the plant.

A 500mm pipe was spewing black and green water into the river that flowed over a 10m-high concrete vertical wall, over the lip and into a pool of bubbling brown.

It was disgusting.

Pinyana scaled the wall to look over the edge (I am still working on my crippling vertigo) and started speaking isiXhosa to four young boys who were swimming in this stuff, just below where the sewage flowed in.

Back in the newsroom, I recounted my experience to my editors. Now it was my turn to be questioned.

Deputy editor Bongani Fuzile showed me how to use Google Maps in layout style, and we tracked and traced the sewage lines from Mdantsane.

A caucus of senior journalists called up their contacts, researchers and experts to validate what I had seen.

The biggest lesson I have learnt, and what my new colleagues do with impressive skill, is that everything needs to be validated.

In journalism, a statement or story is cross-checked, double-checked, subbed, analysed and the end result is as close to the truth as we can get.

The final result of a three-day investigation involving water testing, getting past security at the sewage-polluted Bridle Drift Dam, going back to the Mdantsane sewage plant to take samples, hounding BCM spokesperson Samkelo Ngwenya for answers, was finally publishing my first-ever “splash”. The headline read: “Buffalo City’s sewage leaks into supply dam”.

My dad Mike told me when I first started here that to be a journalist is to find what you are passionate about, what issue you want to fight for.

When he was my age, he was fighting the apartheid system.

Mine seems to be sewage, and for now I think access to clean water and services is a cause worth fighting for.

Let’s hope I’m not arrested like he was.

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