{"id":57110,"date":"2022-11-28T11:36:13","date_gmt":"2022-11-28T10:36:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/international\/?p=57110"},"modified":"2022-11-28T19:12:42","modified_gmt":"2022-11-28T18:12:42","slug":"big-oils-generational-curse-pollutant-related-epigenetic-changes-keeps-south-africans-in-poverty-cycle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/international\/story\/57110\/big-oils-generational-curse-pollutant-related-epigenetic-changes-keeps-south-africans-in-poverty-cycle\/","title":{"rendered":"Big oil\u2019s generational curse: pollutant-related epigenetic changes keeps South Africans in poverty cycle"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"Oliver
Gender-based violence activist Oliver Meth stands outside his childhood home, holding an acknowledgement of his contribution to South Africa\u2019s constitutional values, awarded to him by President Cyril Ramaphosa. The Engen refinery can be seen in the background.
\u00a9 Malcolm Rainers \/ Greenpeace<\/div><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n

Not much has changed in the 40 years since Shareeza Domingo’s family moved out of Wentworth. <\/p>\n\n

It is a Saturday morning and the streets are beginning to buzz with children’s voices as they prepare to partake in soccer fixtures scheduled around the neighbourhood. Even those who don’t play for official school teams at the sporting grounds opposite Engen’s rotting refinery are putting together teams for tournaments at makeshift pitches next to its infamous flats. Aunty Kat is already seated at her spot in the shade of an adjacent tree, where she spends her days waving at passersby. <\/p>\n\n

Wentworth is certainly one of those South African townships where everyone knows everyone else. <\/p>\n\n

Former resident Shareeza Domingo recalls a typical weekend in the neighbourhood during her youth: “There was little to be done in the 1970s, I would say. Basically, it would be a trip to town to do your shopping, get back and the kids were all in the road and everyone was playing, parents are braaing<\/em> and having time together.” <\/p>\n\n

Shareeza\u2019s fond memories of her childhood neighbourhood prompted her to show her daughters, Lamise and Mahira, where both of their parents were born and raised. Having lived in the northern part of Durban since 1992, she felt it important to give them a sense of where their family was rooted, a community she always speaks of with tremendous pride. <\/p>\n\n

It was exactly how she remembered it to be: the way it looked, sounded and felt. The community still finds joy even in its hardship. But just a few moments into their excursion, Shareeza quickly remembers the real reason they had packed up their four-bedroom home in exchange for a small apartment in Durban’s central business district: \u201cthe smell\u201d that killed her father. <\/p>\n\n

\u201cWhen we entered Wentworth my two girls said to me: \u2018Wow, y\u2019all had to live in that smell? That smell that\u2019s stinting? I can\u2019t breathe.\u2019 My eldest one\u2019s father is also from Wentworth, and he also had asthma. She also has asthma, and kept saying, \u2018I\u2019m choking, I\u2019m choking.\u2019 So, we just left.\u201d<\/p>\n\n

\"Shareeza
Former Wentworth resident Shareeza Domingo in the Durban apartment her family moved to in 1992, after her father grew gravely ill from the pollutants he was exposed to while working at a large refinery in the South Durban Basin.
\u00a9 Malcolm Rainers \/ Greenpeace<\/div><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n

Poverty in the air\u00a0<\/h2>\n\n

Wentworth, situated in the South Durban Basin, is surrounded by nearly 300 petrochemical industries, with over 150 smokestacks. Formalised under the Group Areas Act<\/a> during the apartheid regime, its population is still predominantly Coloured*. <\/p>\n\n

Much like other so-called Coloured communities across South Africa, this community continues to spiral into economic despair<\/a> despite the country\u2019s hard earned democracy. But, unlike other townships in the north of Durban with similar racial compositions, one of the key drivers of poverty experienced here is the elevated rates of illness due to long-term exposure to air pollution created by the surrounding industries.    <\/p>\n\n

\u201cAlthough children both in the north and the south were affected by the pollution, the children in the south had much more asthma than the children in the north,\u201d says Professor Rajen Naidoo, an epidemiologist and head of occupational and environmental health at the University of KwaZulu-Natal. <\/p>\n\n

The University of KwaZulu-Natal\u2019s groundbreaking research into the impact of air pollution on the South Durban community began 20 years ago, when residents reported alarming numbers of pupils losing consciousness at school<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n

\u201cWork really started with a single school, the Settlers\u2019 Primary School. There was an incident where a large number of children were collapsing and it was attributed to the elevated levels of pollution in the area,\u201d explains Naidoo. <\/p>\n\n

\u201cSettlers\u2019 Primary was a very interesting school. If you stand out in the playing fields of that school, if you look out in the one direction, you see the smokestacks of the Engen refinery. If you turn around, directly behind you, you see the smokestacks of the SAPREF refinery [Shell and BP]. So clearly depending on which direction the wind blew on a particular day, that school was always in the middle of it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n

It was then when they discovered that the area was indeed a cancer cluster, with leukemia rates in children under the age of 10<\/a> at least 24 times higher than the national average \u2014 but continued study of the community revealed a more dire situation. <\/p>\n\n

\u201cWe hypothesized that it is possible that there is something that genetically reshapes children such that they become more susceptible to develop asthma, because historically we know that asthma is a genetics-based disease,\u201d adds Naidoo.  <\/p>\n\n

\u201cIt seems likely that the pollutants are causing what we refer to as an epigenetic change over a shorter period of time within generations\u2026 and that it is still likely that the next generation or two will still be carrying some of the pollutant-related burden going into the future.\u201d<\/p>\n\n

\"Rajen
Epidemiologist and head of occupational and environmental health at the University of KwaZulu-Natal Professor Rajen Naidoo holding the results of their groundbreaking study into the genetic changes experienced by the South Durban community due to air pollutants from the surrounding oil refineries.
\u00a9 Malcolm Rainers \/ Greenpeace<\/div><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n

Air pollution\u2019s long-lasting legacy\u00a0<\/h2>\n\n

It is, then, not surprising that despite their move out of Wentworth even before her daughter\u2019s birth, Shareeza\u2019s eldest daughter suffers from asthma today \u2014 just like her father. <\/p>\n\n

\u201cPeople thought, \u2018It\u2019s in the genes.\u2019 They\u2019d say: \u2018So, the father had asthma, it follows the same genes. Of course the child will follow.\u2019 That\u2019s what people would say. They knew that the oil refinery was a hazard, but how do you prove that?\u201d<\/p>\n\n

While the Domingo family were able to move out of Wentworth, for most of the residents of the South Durban Basin, there is no refuge from the highly polluted neighbourhood. Naidoo explained that when the lion\u2019s share of an already marginal income is rationed toward the healthcare needs of chronically ill children, there is nearly nothing left to help families escape this toxic environment.<\/p>\n\n

\u201cA lot of the people have been staying there for three or four generations because they are not able to step out. Parents build their children so that they can move up into the next level and escape that poverty cycle, but they are not able to do that in South Durban.\u201d<\/p>\n\n

\u201cOur young people are suffering worse off than ever before. Not only is there a double-dose of asthma, cancer and leukemia, but they don\u2019t have money to study further,\u201d said veteran environmental justice activist and co-ordinator of the South Durban Community Environmental Alliance (SDCEA) Desmond D\u2019Sa<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n

D\u2019sa\u2019s mission to protect his community\u2019s constitutional right to a healthy environment earned him the 2014 Goldman Prize<\/a>. His family was dismantled by the Group Areas Act when he was a child \u2014 with only some of his siblings moved to Wentworth, while others were placed in other racially-based neighbourhoods.   <\/p>\n\n

He co-founded the environmental movement in Durban in response to the large number of injuries and deaths experienced by workers at the refineries due to the toxicity of their work environment. D\u2019sa says that not only are these oil giants evading responsibility for the suffering they have and continue to cause, but they are also further disenfranchising the community through their discriminatory employment practices.     <\/p>\n\n

\u201cEngen doesn\u2019t have a habit of employing budding engineers from the community. In fact, they don\u2019t employ our skilled people here because they know through the medical assessments that they do that already people are affected with their health. So why would they employ people from here?\u201d<\/p>\n\n

\"Desmond
Veteran environmental justice activist and co-ordinator of the South Durban Community Environmental Alliance (SDCEA) Desmond D\u2019Sa stands on the veranda of the organisation\u2019s offices. His home can be seen behind him and smokestacks of another refinery behind that.
\u00a9 Malcolm Rainers \/ Greenpeace<\/div><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n

Toxic relations\u00a0\u00a0<\/h2>\n\n

Soaring unemployment rates in the community, coupled with the mounting financial burdens created by chronic health issues, has had a toxic knock-on effect on the social fabric of Wentworth. <\/p>\n\n

\u201cA sense of hopelessness comes in when a person is unemployed, and those frustrations obviously get carried out and are seen visibly within the community through the abuse of substance, physical violence and the manipulation within your own personal relations,\u201d says Oliver Meth, a gender-based violence activist from Wentworth.  <\/p>\n\n

In 2002, Meth was brutally raped<\/a> by a group of young men in his community. He was just 16. When he had approached the police to report the crime, he was ridiculed and turned away. This hate crime was later used as a case study when the South African government was forced to expand its Sexual Offences Act to include all forms of nonconsensual sexual penetration regardless of gender as rape. <\/p>\n\n

His story is but one example of the lack of institutional support in the community, as well as the extremely high levels of gender-based violence in Wentworth. Meth believed that the only way this community can rid itself of the worst social symptoms of systemic inequality that plague it is to create more economic opportunities for its residents.<\/p>\n\n

\u201cThe main struggle for them is that people are thinking about the immediate, like to put food on the table, and not the long term consequences that these refineries pose to them. The long term effect is not as important to them for now because they are just trying to get through the day,\u201d adds Meth.<\/p>\n\n

Currently, there are very few opportunities available outside of these toxic industries, and what little opportunity remains continues to be threatened by the fossil fuel industry. While these oil giants have all announced their plans to finally abandon these rotting refineries, several more are scrambling for drilling rights<\/a> along the Southern African coastline. <\/p>\n\n

Clearing the air\u00a0<\/h2>\n\n

With firsthand knowledge of the exploits of big oil, local fishers and Indigenous Peoples groups fight tirelessly<\/a> in court to prevent any further loss to their livelihoods because of greedy, colonial industries. Corporations that continue to take advantage of countries in the global majority  whose environmental laws are less strict than in the countries these multinationals are headquartered in, according to Naidoo.   <\/p>\n\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve got to, firstly, have a situation where polluters accept responsibility for what they are doing and what they have done in the past. We\u2019ve got to have a government which holds those polluters responsible, make sure they understand what they\u2019ve done and put into place plans that redress that,\u201d says Naidoo. <\/p>\n\n

\u201cAnd yes, it can be done. If these companies have been generating massive amounts of profits for all these years, then now, it\u2019s in a sense, pay back time. You\u2019ve exploited these communities. You\u2019ve exploited these environments. Now, you\u2019ve got to make good.\u201d <\/p>\n\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t want these big corporations running away from the country. We want them to be held accountable for people\u2019s health, and also to be held accountable for the workers,\u201d adds D\u2019sa. <\/p>\n\n

\u201cThe oil refineries robbed a lot of them of their livelihoods, their families and their loved ones. To find a way to resolve that is rather late but go back and see what you\u2019ve done to the people and rectify it. Compensate them, but money doesn\u2019t save it, at the end of the day,\u201d concludes Domingo.<\/p>\n\n

This article was originally published by Mail & Guardian<\/a> on 26 November 2022. <\/em><\/p>\n\n

*In South Africa, Indigenous Peoples and people of mixed ethnicity were classified Coloured by the apartheid government. The term is still officially used a racial category for these groups under its new democratic dispensation.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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