Zoo Lake

This article explores the presence of an Asian freshwater food snail species discovered in Zoo Lake in Johannesburg in 2019. These non-indigenous snails could be a fascinating, living legacy of anonymous Chinese indentured labourers brought to work on the Witwatersrand gold fields in the early 1900s.

In 1904, 64 000 Chinese indentured workers were brought to Johannesburg to work on the newly established gold mines to overcome a shortage of mine labour. Other than a few photographs, the identity of these individuals is long since lost, but perhaps not entirely forgotten. It is possible that these migrants brought the freshwater snails with them as food items for informal aquaculture, and that these snails quietly live on in and around the old Witwatersrand goldfields.

Zoo Lake is an urban impoundment fed by the Parktown Spruit from a nearby Westcliff ridge and by the storm water drains of the catchment. The water is habitually heavily polluted and experiences seasonal algal blooms.

A peaceful scene at Zoo Lake, Johannesburg, 2019 (Sue Taylor)

An unusual water snail is discovered

In 2019, I noticed a single large water snail on the northern weir and took a photograph. The photograph was sent to Dr Chris Appleton, a retired mollusc specialist in South Africa, and he passed the image on to Dr Nelson Miranda, another...

In December 2021, the Johannesburg Heritage Foundation and Fran Haslam of Zoo Lake welcomed the installation of a second blue plaque at the Zoo Lake, commemorating the centenary of the Lake. The new plaque, installed on an original giant quartzite rock, gives far greater prominence and visibility to this Johannesburg beauty spot. The Zoo Lake area has been a much loved and well used city green lung for over a century and has always been open to all people.

Blue Plaque installed on the Zoo Lake rocks (Kathy Munro)

The inscription on the blue plaque reads as follows:

In 1890 Eduard Lippert established a forest, known as the Sachsenwald, on part of the farm Braamfontein. Part of this was given to the people of Johannesburg in 1904 for the specific use as a public park and named the Herman Eckstein Park after a leading mining pioneer. In 1906 the City Council built a lake on this section, which was marshland. It immediately became a major attraction...