Water Wheel Jan/Feb 2024: Water Quality

Abstract

W ATER QUALITY A ‘stain treater’ at a central Durban laundry, Vuyelwa Mangqinda has “seen some things” on the dirty piles of hospital and hotel linen that pass through her hands. But she can’t afford to be squeamish. Jobs are hard to find and to stretch her modest wage further, she is quite prepared to up the yuck factor. The motherof-two recently quit her room in an RDP house in Clermont, to the west of the city, for a shack closer to work, saving on transport about R50 a day. I met Mangqinda outside a spaza shop on a steep muddy track that winds its way through Johanna Road, an informal settlement a few kilometres from the mouth of the Umgeni River. It was a Wednesday on a wet Durban November morning and Mangqinda, who works nights at the laundry, was off to bed in about an hour. Happy to chat first, she told how moving to Johanna Road, with its dirt and its stinks, had been hard at first. “I wanted to go back (to Clermont). I had to adjust,” the 29-year-old said. Like many Johanna Road residents, Mangqinda hails from the rural Eastern Cape.

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