October 22, 2002
By Lucille Davie
YOU know that your parks reclamation programme is working when kids queue up to tell you about older kids spraying graffiti on the newly cleaned park walls.
This is what happens to Michelle van Blerk, friendly-but-firm general manager of inner city parks, when she comes and checks on the progress of the parks reclamation programme of which she is the brainchild. The three-year R3-million programme involves 26 "sleeping beauty" parks, and exciting things are happening not only to the parks but to the communities that live alongside them.
Many of the inner city parks were established when the early suburbs of Johannesburg were planned. They used to be quiet oases in the city's most densely populated areas, with beautiful old palms, jacarandas and plane trees and green lawns offering refuge from high-rise living.
Since the late 1980s when the city experienced several waves of people moving out of the city, the parks have been neglected, and taken over by where vagrants, drug dealers and prostitutes. But since February this year the low life in the city's parks has disappeared.
Van Blerk exclaims: "Parks like to be loved." And that's certainly what they're getting in big doses from her and her team.
Van Blerk has a no-nonsense approach. She walks around the parks and tells people to pick up their litter - "Several months ago we used to fill 200 litter bags a day at Joubert Park. Now we take away 40 bags a day." She confiscates the soccer balls of those playing in the parks where it is prohibited - "I have 68 balls that were taken from people at Joubert Park." And she orders sleeping people to move on so that her workmen can mow the grass.
"I have a zero tolerance approach. We manage the parks on the broken pane principle - we fix damage within 48 hours. It boils down to a tough love stance," she says. And she won't hesitate to call the police if she feels she can't deal with a situation.
And there's no doubt it's working, with surrounding communities starting to a personal interest in their parks. Where months ago most city parks - in the CBD, Joubert Park, Berea and Hillbrow - were no-go areas ruled by drug lords, vagrants and drunkards, now the parks are attractive places with volunteers monitoring the movements of those using the parks and those not wanted in the parks.
The parks now have fenced children's play areas, basketball courts, mini soccer fields where parks can accommodate them, chess sets and tables, and fences.
Some parks that were just untidy fields have been landscaped, with attractive paving, concrete balls and gravel demarcating different areas in each park. One or two parks have braai bins to cater for weekend picnics. Parks with elegant stone walls were covered with graffiti. These walls have been cleaned and have remained clean. Scruffy hedges were removed and replaced with palisade fencing. Most flower beds, which were overrun with weeds and used by vagrants as toilet corners, have been removed and replaced with grass. Now the beautiful old trees are once again visible, offering precious shade to residents. In some parks toilets that were being used by squatters have been demolished.
Mitchell Park in Berea has a newly installed urinal and toilet (with fixtures cemented in). These are experimental, and if they work they will be installed in all the parks, says Van Blerk.
She has become well known in the parks. "When I come in one gate, the vagrants disappear out another gate." She used to visit the parks daily, sometimes twice a day. Now she visits once a week, to keep an eye on her beauties.
Before action was started on the parks, the local communities were consulted and asked what they wanted in the spaces. Most of the parks are in densely populated areas and the only recreation outlet for those communities. And most importantly, action on the parks started within a few weeks of the discussions.
The parks were so dangerous that workers had to go in gangs to clean them. Now Van Blerk goes by herself to these parks, and single workman are happy to work in the parks on their own.
In one park, End Street North in Doornfontein, vagrants used to make fires in the park and paper sorters occupied one corner of the park, leaving litter every day. The vagrants have disappeared and the paper sorters work outside the park now.
The newly paved, low-maintenance End Street north park
But it's not only the lives of the vagrants and paper sorters that have changed. The communities now treat the parks as their personal property and responsibility. They will make a note of graffiti painters and tell Van Blerk where the painter lives. She will visit the parents and tell them what their child has been doing. The painting will subsequently stop.
"The principle is not to allow dope smokers or soccer players or religious groups to take space that belongs to thousands of people," explains Van Blerk.
In Donald Mackay Park, once a gracious park with demarcated levels and stone walls that served Hillbrow's pensioners, new lighting was installed. "While it was being installed there was no vandalism of the wires or fittings. Two years ago it would have been vandalised."
Most of the parks - often named after previous city councillors.- are to have name changes.
Long-term plans
Van Blerk has long-term plans. She wants to create jobs for volunteers, combined with keeping an eye on the new-look parks. She plans to set up kiosks that sell sweets, cooldrinks, magazines and chips (not cigarettes or alcohol), to be run by the volunteers. She will organise retail training courses for the volunteers, and in time they will pay back the investment of the kiosk and its stock. At the same time they'll keep an eye on the comings and goings in the parks.
Van Blerk is also gradually working towards locking all the parks at night, after 9pm, as a control measure. She is using a gradual approach - several gates at Joubert Park have been closed completely, making it easier to control the parameters of the park. Other parks have gates half closed, and in several months those gates will be completely closed.
She has plans for an inner city chess competition, once all the parks have their chess sets and tables in place, and the players have reached a fair level of competence.
The blue balls in the JL de Villiers Park
Once she has completed work on the eight parks she has been working on, she plans to move onto parks in Yeoville, Troyeville and Fordsburg.
Maybe the residents of those suburbs are going to invite her to the opening of their parks like the residents living around Mitchell Park did. But when she turned up driving into the park in her car, and took out beer to share with her hosts, they said to her: "You're not allowed to drive in our park, or bring alcohol into the park!"
The sleeping beauties are waking to a bright, clear day.
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