Meet Yumna Beukes — guerrilla gardener and fearsome Joburg aunty

‘There’s one thing I really hate and that’s dumping,” says 72-year-old Yumna Beukes, who lives in Bertrams and has, to date, turned 32 illegal dumping spots in her neighbourhood and surrounds into pavement gardens. “It makes such a difference seeing beauty,” she says. 

Bertrams is a small suburb on the eastern edge of Johannesburg’s CBD, in between New Doornfontein, Lorentzville, Bez valley, Judith’s Paarl and Troyeville. An historically Jewish working-class neighbourhood, it’s now home to South Africans, Congolese, Mozambicans and Zimbabweans. 

A mosque sits alongside a revivalist church. Ponte dominates the skyline, Ellis Park below it; and here, the source of the Jukskei River. Nearby is Victoria Yards, Jozi’s most iconic creative hub, with makers, artists and growers all flourishing in a funky post-industrial space, and across the road, Nando’s Central Kitchen, flying the flag in the inner city.

I meet Mama Yumna Beukes at the corner of 1st Street and 7th Avenue in Bez Valley where she shows me her latest beautification, a pavement garden fashioned from old tyres, softening the gritty street views. 

“Locals were dumping here, so I turned it into a garden. Then they started dumping across the road, so I turned that into a garden too. Same thing with a guy just up the road. He was so arrogant and just dumped rubbish outside his house. So, we fixed that too.”

Part guerrilla gardener, part community activist, Beukes is one fearsome aunty. She has rallied locals, young and old, to help her dig and clean and greenify. Slowly people are starting to take pride in these pavement gardens, she says, and are adopting them and maintaining them. Water is a huge challenge, however, both a lack of supply in the area, and rainwater that just rushes down broken pavements and floods the roads.  

Born in Krugersdorp, Beukes studied agriculture in Stellenbosch and worked in Worcester, Ceres and Grabouw, where she practised animal husbandry. She also worked in the Free State – “there is a lot of space there”, she sighs – where she taught women to grow their own food and develop co-ops.

“When I moved back to Jozi a few years ago,” says Mama Beukes, “I couldn’t believe the rubbish.” But transforming rubbish-filled hotspot pavements into gardens is just one part of Beukes’s work. Her main game is food security and to this end she has started food gardens at schools in the area, as well as at the local old age home, Parks Cottages. “Imagine if you could just go to your front door and pick the greens and herbs you need to add to your dinner?

“Garden education needs to start from the schools. Once you teach a child to do something, you teach the nation. The child will then stop the mother from dumping on the corner. I would like to have programmes in all the schools. All the open spaces in the schools can be filled with food.”

While it’s now the start of summer and things are dry, in the past year Beukes has been able to supply food to soup kitchens, the elderly and schools. She has partnered with local community groups including KiCK (Keep it Clean Kensington) to use food waste to make compost, and last year even donated corn to the animals at the Joburg Zoo. 

Her work is a testament to grassroots action. Mama Yumna isn’t just planting seeds in the ground; she’s planting hope in the hearts of everyone around her. DM