‘Imbawula is our only hope’: Kliptown residents brave cold with makeshift heaters

As a bitter cold front sweeps across Gauteng and other parts of the country, residents of Kliptown informal settlement say they have little choice but to turn to dangerous makeshift fires and braziers to keep themselves warm.

Women wrapped fleece blankets around their waists, while others remained in their gowns and sleepwear on Monday. Children played in the streets wearing gowns as their parents tried to shield themselves from the cold.

For many residents without electricity, an imbawula, a brazier, is their only source of warmth.

Resident Imininathi Mntombi said there was little else they could use to keep their homes warm.

“There is nothing else that can help us keep warm except using an imbawula. It is the only thing that keeps us warm because we don’t have electricity,” she said.

Mntombi said residents light fires in tins using wood and wait for the smoke to clear before bringing the brazier closer to the house.

“We put the wood inside the tin and when the smoke has subsided we take the burning brazier inside the house. But we don’t sleep with it because we know it is dangerous,” she said.

She said her household had also designated a separate shack for cooking and making fires, where family members could sit and eat before returning to their homes.

“We sit there and eat there, and when everyone else is going home, we put the fire out,” she said.

Another resident, Prudence Khanyi, said residents were not sitting outside because they wanted to, but because their shacks were simply too cold.

“We are sitting outside because it is cold inside our shacks,” she said.

Khanyi said families often only lit their fires later in the evening so they could use them for cooking and warmth.

For many households, safer alternatives such as gas or paraffin are unaffordable.

Residents often have to collect wood from nearby bushveld areas to make fires.

“We cannot afford gas or paraffin, so we have to go and collect wood to make fires, cook and keep warm,” she said.

Sibongile Hlatshwayo, another Kliptown resident, said the lack of reliable electricity had left residents dependent on potentially dangerous alternatives.

“We rely on things that are not safe to keep ourselves warm because we don’t have electricity,” she said.

Hlatshwayo said some residents resorted to illegal electricity connections, but these were unreliable.

“Even when we connect illegally, the electricity comes and goes. We cannot afford paraffin or gas and gas stoves because they are expensive, and most of us are not working,” she said.

She said despite knowing the dangers associated with braziers, residents continued to use them because they had no other way of surviving the cold.

“It is not safe, but it is something that has been sustaining us during cold weather,” she said.

In Etwatwa, resident Maureen Baloyi said families were also relying on coal stoves, braziers and outdoor fires as temperatures drop.

Baloyi said some residents even sleep with braziers inside their shacks because the nights become unbearably cold.

“Although it is dangerous, some of us do sleep with the imbawula because it gets extremely cold at night,” she said.

She said residents try to remain awake and monitor the fires before eventually removing the braziers once the flames die down.

Baloyi said the dangers of fires and smoke remain fresh in the minds of residents after a deadly shack fire in November last year that claimed the lives of a family.

“There had also been more recent incidents involving children dying from smoke inhalation and shack fires, although none had reached the scale of the tragedy that claimed the family of five,” she said.

For residents living in informal settlements, the looming cold front is not only about enduring low temperatures. It is also about balancing the need for warmth with the risks posed by fires, smoke and carbon monoxide poisoning.