Linden

When Johannesburg’s august Mayor, Harry Graumann (later Sir Harry), welcomed the Duke and Duchess of Connaught on 28 November 1910 he presented the Royal couple – who had come to South Africa to open the first Union Parliament – with a lavish commemorative book. This described the Town Engineer’s duties in terms of roads, parks, gas, electricity provision and other grand projects, but there was not a word about sewage, such were the Edwardian sensitivities to this delicate subject. Yet the disposal of human waste has determined the size and success of cities for millennia. Delta Park owes its existence to the expansion of Johannesburg’s sewage scheme during the 1930s when rural farmland on the outskirts of the city was transformed into the Delta Sewage Disposal Works.

Johannesburg is situated on the Witwatersrand watershed and rivers flow either to the south (into the Klip River, thence into the Vaal River, and eventually into the Atlantic Ocean) or to the north (feeding into the Crocodile River, the Limpopo River and disemboguing into the Indian Ocean). The city is somewhat unusual in always having separated waste-water (including sewage) from storm-water. Until a Town Engineer’s Department was established in 1902 after the South African War, sewage was collected in tarred buckets and removed beyond the town’s boundaries by horse-drawn night-soil carts to be used as fertilizer on neighbouring farms. Naturally, disease was a regular hazard.
             
Between 1902 and 1910 a very large gravity-fed sewage scheme (at...

In the article below, journalist Lucille Davie reveals some of the forgotten and fascinating history of the Johannesburg suburb of Linden. The piece was originally published on the City of Joburg's website on 14 September 2004. Click here to view more of Davie's work.

Peach and cherry orchards, fields of maize, chicken farms, a large dairy . . . Sound way out in the country? It wasn't. This nature lover's paradise existed in Linden in the 1920s, and you can read all about it in Tim Truluck's Historical Map of Linden.
 
This is Truluck's second fold-out brochure - the first was on Parkhurst - and meticulous research has obviously gone into this history, tracing Linden's history from its earliest beginnings in 1899.
 
Truluck plans to research the history of all Joburg's suburbs, eventually producing a book.
 
The suburb was named after Johannes Jacobus Rabie van der Linde, a farmer from Philippolis in the Free State. He co-owned the south western corner of the farm Klipfontein with Louw Geldenhuys, who farmed fruit and vegetables on the neighbouring farm of Braamfontein.

Stoep of the original farmhouse in 2nd Avenue Linden (Lucille Davie)

They both bought their portions of the farm in 1896 but...