David Munk – A proactive Jakarta community is fighting back against the threat of demolition by turning itself into an example of what the city it sits in is not – a beacon of environmental protection.
Residents of Tongkol kampung in the north of the sprawling capital have already achieved a striking transformation of their lifestyle practices, their homes, and the river that runs through their community.
More than 250 families – some who have been there more than 40 years – have been threatened with eviction from the riverbank because their collection of makeshift brick and wooden houses in Tongkol and its neighbouring kampungs have been built without permission.
The city administrators claim they require a swathe of land each side of the river – stretching back 15 metres, according to the regulation – for an inspection road which would help monitor the causes of the floods that frequently stop Jakarta in its tracks. The land here belongs to the national government.
But instead of waiting for eviction and demolition, as has already occurred in numerous other Jakarta kampungs, Tongkol residents have taken matters into their own hands. They used sledgehammers to knock down the front of their homes and move them back five metres from the waterway, thus creating clear access along the riverbank. In some cases this process halved their floor space.
They also set about a wholescale clean-up of their environment. They built rafts to collect rubbish from the river (in part to counter unfair accusations that they were wholly responsible for its polluted state), planted trees along its banks, set up a community-wide recycling and composting system, and encouraged self-sufficiency with vegetable gardens.
The result is a strikingly tranquil kampung which boasts a riot of colourful, inventive homes alongside papaya and cherry trees – and a thriving community spirit.
Gugun Muhammad, a thirty-something resident and community organiser who also works for the Urban Poor Consortium, is one of the scheme's proponents. Sitting on a plastic chair in front of his redbrick-and-bamboo house, which itself was relocated from the riverbank, he waves a pungent clove-scented cigarette around as he describes the threat hanging over their heads.
"It is like death: it is a mystery when we will find out," he says, of the wait the 700-plus residents are having to endure. "The 'inspection street' regulation is just a reason so they can demolish us – this is more about labelling slum areas. So the people here talked among themselves and said, 'Let's give the government the street they demand.'"
Gugun points to the ground by his feet, where the footprint of his old house can still be seen. It was dismantled, moved back and redesigned to fit a much smaller space.
The assembled group of residents – the remainder are all women full of smiles and laughter – bring out photographs that show the old river, packed on its sides by ramshackle homes, its banks littered with bottles and the debris of Jakarta life. "Now we tell people something different: not to throw it in the water, but to use this," Gugun says, pointing at a rusting, half-cut oil barrel which serves as a community bin.
Gugun says the success of their project – aided by Architects without Borders – can be seen in the recycling rates among the community. Some homes are now reusing more than 80% of their rubbish, and a chart on a big display board shows off that success, along with the names and faces of those responsible.
The community has also built septic tanks in dozens of the small homes, ensuring effluent is not poured untreated into the river.
Gugun says that while this transformation has benefitted the quality of life here no end, the project also has a wider ambition: to serve as a case study that demonstrates to city leaders what can be achieved by Jakarta's poorest communities – and why they should be allowed to remain rather than being forced out to faraway, soulless suburbs.
"If you try to woo a girl, you put some things on to make yourself look attractive," he says, using an analogy he seems to enjoy.
But the community is working against the odds. A subsequent visit to City Hall reveals the 15-metre regulation can only be adjusted by petitioning a change in the national law in 2019, with city officials saying they are powerless to reinterpret the regulation in the meantime because "the law is the law".
However, the city's affable deputy governor for spatial planning and environment, Oswar Mungkasa, has visited Tongkol a number of times, and acknowledges the work that has been done there to clean up the river and its surrounding environment.
During our own visit, the residents take us on a mini-tour of their community. A wooden ferry carries us the 10 metres across the brown, fast-flowing river which dissects the kampungs to a small, half-built mosque.
"Not clean, but cleaner," Gugun says of the river, indicating the work that is still to be done – and the fact that his community is helpless about all the waste and rubbish that is discarded by the city upstream of Tongkol.
Nearby residents proudly show off their vertical vegetable gardens, planted inside hollowed-out banana trees and bamboo trunks. A starfruit tree has shed its produce on to the ground, where groups of kittens play and snooze out of the way of the hot afternoon sun.
At the end of the village, bare walls which had been exposed by the demolition of homes too close to the water are covered in colourful murals; one depicts a scene more like Venice than Jakarta.
At the end of the tour, when asked what would happen if the city decides to move in and evict the residents, one older woman – who says she has been living in Tongkol for 43 years – has only bleak words.
"This is about the security of our future," she tells us. "Do not demolish us, do not evict us. We do not know were we would go."