Why Cold Drinks Matter: Relieving Heat in South Africa

By Eileen Jahn, Junior Fellow at the Bayreuth International Graduate School of African Studies (BIGSAS)

Imagine the moment you open the oven door to check on some freshly baked cookies. The whiff of warm, sweetly saturated air swiftly envelops you, leaving behind a lingering heat and a gradually fading smell throughout the room you are in. This sensory encounter vividly captures the essence of Slovo Park, where my research took place from May 2022 to February 2023, and where, with the permission of the community leaders, I lived for about one month. Each day, the settlement is engulfed in this blend of scents and the relentless, sweltering heat, particularly during the bustling hours of sweets production in the factories located on the southern periphery. On most days in the spring and summer time, the heat emanates both from the mercilessly blistering sun and the sandy soil. Wind is scarce and usually arrives at the same time as the heavy and equally unrelenting rain pounding the mix of corrugated iron and shingled roofs. The combination of heat from above and below, the air thick and stifling, often makes me feel like being trapped inside a giant oven.

Now, let me provide further details about Slovo Park, to provide readers with a more comprehensive understanding of the area. Situated in the southwestern corner of the City of Johannesburg, on the southern fringes of the South Western Townships (Soweto), lies Slovo Park, also officially recognized as Nancefield Settlement by the Gauteng Department of Housing. This informal settlement spans an area of 470,000 square meters and community leaders estimate the total population to range between 12,000 and 18,000 Black (South) African working poor as of 2023. The settlement is interspersed with a significant number of spaza shops for dry food and household items, taverns, and shebeens, as well as numerous diverse churches. In terms of essential services, the Municipality has installed a total of 720 communal taps. However, as indicated by community members, this quantity falls short of the actual demand. Additionally, the water source is often inconveniently distant, posing difficulties for residents, particularly in the evenings, at night, or in emergency situations like fires. Continually transporting substantial water quantities for various daily tasks such as laundry, cooking, and bathing proves time-intensive and laborious for all residents. Consequently, most residents have taken it upon themselves to extend these communal taps into their yards by attaching supplementary pipes. Household taps are exceedingly rare in Slovo Park. Due to the self-made connections, water pressures vary depending on the thickness of the pipe running to the yards, the distance to the industrial water pipe, and the time of day, which is related to the number of people using water (Socio-Economic Rights Institute of South Africa 2014).

Within this community, I spent months engaging with residents, who served as my interlocutors. The objective of my overall research was to gain an in-depth understanding of the daily lived experiences concerning electricity, or the absence thereof, from the distinctive perspectives of the residents at infrastructural but also socio-economic margins. Notably, it was only in 2018 that formalized electricity was installed in Slovo Park by the Municipality, and the area was subsequently integrated into the national electricity grid. 

Regulating Temperatures Between Inside and Outside Spaces

One morning in early October 2022, I woke up to a loud rooster's crow and the neighboring amapiano music, accompanied by scratching sounds against the metal walls. It is still before seven, but I am immediately overwhelmed by the stifling heat that envelops me, which has been building up for a few hours now with the sun's steady rise. Houses built with corrugated iron on all sides quickly expose people and objects inside to the fluctuations of the day's temperature. Metal sheets are a ubiquitous building material for low-cost housing used in informal settlements as it is quick to assemble, widely available, and relatively cheap (see Mabuya & Scholes 2020). Ultimately, the inside temperatures exceed those of the outside, turning the inside hotter during the day and colder during the night. As the summer progresses, however, the heat lingers between the iron sheets in the evenings, reluctant to leave for about an hour after the sun disappears before making way for a similarly relentless cold. 

I get up, and, breathing heavily, walk over to open the door, only to be greeted by a slightly cooler breeze, the sight of slowly dripping drinking water from the faucet across from my door, and an array of plastic buckets and metal tubs soaking various articles of clothing. The shared courtyard is peaceful and everyone seems to be either sleeping, already at work, or out and about running errands. In preparation for another day with temperatures peaking in the 30s, I put on a pair of denim shorts and a slightly worn black t-shirt. Even though brick houses also retain heat, they seem to do a better job of regulating the temperature between inside and outside, I think to myself, even when they have corrugated iron roofs. 

These days, around nine o'clock, it becomes unbearably scorching indoors. The only escape is to go and stay outdoors, where it is slightly less hot. As I think about what to do, I remember that Mkhulu, the main resident of my friend Sibongile's yard, is leaving tomorrow for a few days to drive a large truck delivering snacks from local factories to warehouses in other parts of Gauteng, the Free State, and the Western Cape. On my way to meet them, I pass by several yards where women are either busy washing clothes or packing tomatoes, onions, and peppers into small clear plastic bags for sale, and old women and men are sitting in any available patch of shade. As I turn the corner near my friend's yard, I see Sibongile, Alisha, and Lerato sitting on black plastic chairs in the shade of the large tree in their neighbor's yard. “Sanibonani, molweni, dumelang,” (English: hello in Zulu, Xhosa, and Pedi) I greet the group as I enter the yard, and they all synchronously respond with “Yebo” (English: yes). Mkhulu comes out of his house carrying a dark blue camping chair, ducks under the laundry dripping from the clotheslines, and beckons me to sit with the women in the shade. Meanwhile, Mkhulu moves slowly into the sun, to the side of the tap, to wash his shoes.

Boundary-Making Through a Fleetingly Cool Relief

Sibongile exclaims while waving her hand for air, “Eish, it’s too hot these days and the heat seems to stay longer than it used to.” With a wink and a playful tongue-out gesture she adds, “Eileena would like a cold drink,” addressing Mkhulu. Approximately once a week, especially on scorching days, she will ask him for money to buy a cold drink as offering a refreshment to a guest is a customary gesture of hospitality. However, Sibongile knows my preference rarely leans toward sweet, carbonated beverages. Thus, her request in my name isn't solely a gesture of being a gracious hostess together with Mkhulu’s help. 

By now, I am somewhat familiar with the pattern and meaning of the request for a cold drink on my behalf: Even though I haven’t mentioned anything about wanting a cold drink, Sibongile wants to make sure I am comfortable and, at the same time, that she, and sometimes whoever else is in the yard, has something cold to drink as well. “What cold drink would you like, Eileena,” asks Mkhulu, scrubbing the sides of a pair of white sneakers. Still unsure how to comfortably handle these requests, I turn to Sibongile and whisper, “What cold drink?” Without hesitation, she promptly responds, “Stoney.” I repeat her choice as if it were my own, directing my words to Mkhulu. He proceeds to make his way to his house at the back of the yard to get 20 Rand. The cash is then handed over to Alisha, the youngest among us, who jumps to her feet, hoping to have a taste of the beverage. She heads to the nearest spaza shop just around the corner to fetch a cool bottle of Stoney. In anticipation, we get cups and glasses from Sibongile’s house to rinse.

In many ways, the ebb and flow of an erratic electricity supply dictate the rhythm of life in Slovo Park. The lack of consistent refrigeration not only makes it difficult to preserve food but also makes it difficult to save money through bulk purchases or keeping one’s own beverages chilled. During hot summer days, when little relief can be found in fanning the warm air or moving around, and when most residents seek refuge outdoors due to the lack of cooling within their homes, the imperative to lower one's body temperature becomes exponentially pronounced. At such times, the absence of consistent cooling systems within individual homes and the reliance on local vendors equipped with large refrigerators, often powered by diesel generators for backup, becomes crystal clear. In these stifling hot, humid, and windless places, where one’s body's temperature matches that of the environment, the boundaries between my body and the space around me become blurred and indistinguishable. Sometimes, this sensory apathy renders me numb.

Amidst the multifaceted constraints and instabilities prevalent in an informal settlement, the seemingly simple sight of delicate condensation forming on the outside of a chilled bottle, coupled with the vivid imagination of the harmonious clinking of ice cubes, allows us to envision a fleeting respite from the ceaseless and unrelenting heat. This transient escape affords a brief intermission from the stifling, stagnant ambiance that envelopes the settlement. Within an architectural landscape predominantly characterized by heat-absorbing metal sheet houses, punctuated by scarce pockets of shade outside individual homes, and defined by infrastructural fragility and insufficiency – ranging from water and power shortages to limited options for reliable and consistent refrigeration – the importance of cold drinks becomes apparent as a means of protection from overheating, granting a momentary and shared relief. Once the chilled drink is carefully poured, the glasses are cool to the touch, extending a comforting coolness in stark contrast to the pervasive heat. We slowly take sip after sip to savor the drink and make it last just a little while longer. Dew forms on the surface of the glass, drop by drop, until some grow weighty enough to descend to the bottom pooling into tiny, refreshing puddles on any surface or body they touch. These meandering droplets leave behind a trail for no particular purpose or entity to follow. It is in these moments that a cold drink restores the boundaries between one’s own corporeal presence and the surrounding environment, infusing a refreshing coolness into the fiery furnace that defines summertime in Slovo Park.

References

Mabuya, Bongokuhle, and Mary Scholes. 2020. The Three Little Houses: A Comparative Study of Indoor and Ambient Temperatures in Three Low-Cost Housing Types in Gauteng and Mpumalanga, South Africa. International journal of environmental research and public health, 17(10), 3524. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph17103524 

Socio-Economic Rights Institute of South Africa (SERI). 2014. Slovo Park: Twenty Years of Broken Promises. Community Practice Notes: Informal settlement series no. 1.4. Johannesburg, South Africa: SERI. Available: http://seri-sa.org/images/SlovoPark_CPNFinal.pdf (accessed August 28th, 2023).