Asem

The air over the Highveld belongs to everyone

We measure it, we publish it, and we help households burn less of it.

See this winter's readings

What we actually do

Six programmes, all of them running out of one room behind the Middelburg library.

Monitors on roofs

Twenty-two low-cost PM2.5 monitors on school and clinic roofs between Mhluzi and Kanonkop, wiped and checked every second Saturday.

Readings in the open

Every hourly reading goes onto the public log the same day, raw, with the calibration note attached to it.

Cleaner stoves

We build closed stoves at the back of the library and sell them at what they cost us, R180, with the fire-lighting lesson included.

Chest clinics

Thursday chest mornings with the sisters at Mhluzi clinic — peak flow, a nebuliser if it is needed, and a referral if it is worse than that.

Street champions

One volunteer per street writes down the six o’clock smoke by eye, so we know what the sensors on the roofs could not see.

Standing at hearings

We read the licence applications, we write the objections, and we sit in the hall until the item is finally called.

Away from the smoke, towards the numbers

From May to August the cold air sits on the Highveld like a lid. Smoke from an evening fire cannot get up through it, so it spreads sideways at roof height and stays in the street until the sun comes up and lifts it. Everybody here already knows this. You can taste it walking to the taxi at half past five. What nobody had was a reading — a number, at an address, at an hour, that you can put in front of a municipality or a licence hearing without being told you are imagining it. So we started measuring. Twenty-two monitors, all on buildings people actually use, all logging every hour, all of it published raw the same day whether it flatters anybody or not. Asem is eleven people working out of a back room behind the Middelburg library. Four of us grew up in Mhluzi, two are retired station technicians, and none of us is paid to like the answer.

What we are chasing before winter

  1. Forty monitors on roofs by 1 May, up from the twenty-two running now. The eighteen new ones go to Kanonkop, Extension 24 and the houses along the Hendrina road.
  2. Nine hundred smoky braziers swapped for closed stoves, at the R180 they cost us to build and not one cent more from the household.
  3. Every reading published inside twenty-four hours, raw, with its calibration note. No monthly summary, no rounding, no quiet days.
  4. Three clinics running a chest morning through the cold months — Mhluzi, Kanonkop and the Hendrina road clinic, one morning a week each.
  5. Sixty street champions on the roster by the end of March, so that no street is left logging its own evening smoke alone.
  6. Every licence hearing in Steve Tshwete attended, read beforehand, and objected to in writing wherever the paperwork does not add up.

It takes one night a month

A street champion walks their own road at six, writes down what they can see and smell, and sends it. That is the whole job. We do the rest.

Get involved

What a clear night actually reads

On 14 June last year the wind came up from the south at about eight and never dropped. The Mhluzi roof monitor read eleven micrograms all the way through the night. The next night was dead still, and the same monitor on the same roof read a hundred and forty-two at half past seven. Same houses. Same fires. Same coal. The only thing that changed was whether the air could move at all. That is why we keep saying this is fixable. Nobody has to stop cooking or stop keeping warm. The smoke that hurts people is mostly the smoke of a badly lit fire in a still hour, and a closed stove and a better way of lighting it takes most of that away.

Thursday evening, the hall on Walter Sisulu

Once a month we print the month’s readings, put them up on the wall of the community hall and go through them line by line. Anyone can come. Bring the reading from your own street and we will show you where it sits against everybody else’s. It is not a lecture. Most of the evening is people arguing about what the number means, which is exactly what a public reading is for. Winter meetings start at half past five so that people are home before dark. Tea is on the table at the back. Children are welcome and there is usually somebody keeping an eye on them.

Who stands with us

Mhluzi Clinic

The Thursday chest mornings

Middelburg Library

Our back room, and the wall we print on

Kanonkop Primary

Four roof monitors and a science club

Highveld Air Watch

Licence hearings and the objections

Steenkoolvlei Trust

The stove fund, since 2023

Komati Ratepayers

Sixty households on the roster

Get involved

12 Wanderers Avenue, Middelburg 1050 013 243 7714 Weekday mornings 08h00–12h30, and Thursday evenings through winter