Jo'Burg Days: A New Development
The city of Johannesburg is marching inexorably further and further north as its suburbs expand. As urban sprawl devours more and more of the lovely Highveld grassland, Barbara Durlacher remembers childhood days when she could ride a bike down sandy roads through unspoilt country.
Near where I live there is a lovely open stretch of country, Highveld grassland with smooth undulating contours and soft declivities. In the summer the tall grass is a deep, brilliant green, while in the long dry months of winter, after the frost has touched it and before the dreadful veld fires start, it turns a lion-tawny yellow, a delight to the eye.
Each day, driving back from the office, it was a special pleasure to glance across these lovely open pastures. So unspoilt, so clean and timeless, and so reminiscent of urban Johannesburg as it was when I was a kid in the nineteen forties and fifties, riding my bike along the sandy roads and bumping across the shallow spruits (streams) glorying in youth and freedom.
Now, sometimes in the late afternoon, I catch a rare glimpse here of a “Sakabula” bird (Long-tailed Wydah) endemic to the grasslands of Eastern and Southern Gauteng, and note it’s wobbling, dipping flight as it drags it’s long tail, heavily rain-soaked from a recent shower, from one tall grass tuft to another. Seed-eaters, the breeding male, slightly larger than a canary, has an extra-long tail and bright red shoulder patches, whilst the rest of the plumage is a deep glossy black. The birds breed at the height of the summer rainfall season and nest in the long buffalo grass of the spacious uplands and their floppy flights are unmistakable.
In many parts of the Highveld their habitat is under threat, as the grasslands are denuded by uncontrolled annual burning, whilst urban advancement is rapidly approaching and soon there will no longer be anywhere for them to nest.
It is absolutely incredible how the city has grown in the past 10 yrs, and every day as I pass, I see more and more signs of encroachment, and it is hard to realise that these beautiful grasslands will not be here much longer. The developer's boards are all over the area as new factories and townhouses spring up. Johannesburg is marching inexorably further and further north, and ‘dormitory’ suburbs are expanding exponentially. So, this newest townhouse development with a proposed name of "Emerald Lawns" will not be long arriving.
As the board says "Live where the grass is greener!" while the diggers, JCBs, trenchers, scrapers and tipper trucks work ceaselessly every day to denude the earth of every blade of grass and vegetation to enable the urban sprawl and concrete jungle to take over as quickly as possible.
