From shoeboxes to matchboxes – the Barracks community.

by Gillian Schutte. (wip) April/May 2010
Pictures and video by Sipho Singiswa & Gillian Schutte

It’s a blistering hot afternoon when we arrive at the Barracks. This regimentally built cluster of council houses was erected as a transit camp in Wentworth in 1972. It was to temporarily house part of the community that was forcibly removed from Cato Manor to Durban South in 1966, and was living in shacks along Duranta Road. Thirty-six years later the same community lives there, many of them impoverished and unemployed. The smell of rotten eggs permeates the air. The stench is not rotten eggs though, but rather a blend of pollutants emitted from the refinery stacks that overshadow the dwellings of the people living in the Wentworth community. To be precise what we smell is a concoction of about 100 chemicals that are discharged from the oil refinery every day. In this case the rotten egg smell comes from the Engen oil refinery -- but SAPREF oil refinery is only a further 700 m’s away and also emitting its own 100 chemicals or so. This toxic concoction is what the Wentworth community breathes in daily and reports have indicated that there are very high asthma, cancer and leukemia rates in the area. The blend includes metals such as lead and mercury as well as very small dust particles called PM10 that get deep into the lungs making it hard to breathe. Add to that, emissions such as sulphur dioxide (SO2), nitrogen oxide (NO2), carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, methane, dioxins, hydrogen fluoride, chlorine, benzene and others. It is no wonder this area has been referred to as a virtual gas chamber.