Story Ark

Latest: Leonie Joubert ‘ three-part series on the Karoo Dust Belt won the 2025 Africa Science Journalism Awards News/Feature category.

Leonie Joubert, with her tent, car, laptop and two cats, is on a three-year trek around the country to report on the impact of climate change, and other environmental issues. The Story Ark, Tales from Southern Africa’s Climate Tipping Points, is run in conjunction with Stellenbosch University’s School for Climate Studies and the Daily Maverick.

She writes: “Time. The privilege of time for slow, deep thinking. And silence. Our brains need these to advance an idea and craft a story, in the way that a parched throat needs water. Story Ark is like one long writer’s retreat. It’s also a return to slow journalism. I recently heard this called ‘artisanal’ journalism. Much like the idea of the writer’s retreat, this phrasing sounds a bit like overly-precious craft beer or hand-rolled facial hair that’s been sculpted with the tallow of a moss-fed yak from somewhere in the melting tundra, or what-what. Slow journalism is really just a return to real journalism … “Read her full account of this groundbreaking project.

For the work coming out of our SA | AJP project, go here. | For Our City News see here.

These two-decade-old planted spekboom bushes at Cambria on the edge of the Baviaanskloof UNESCO World Heritage Site show the characteristic skirting that creates a nursery environment around their base in which other plants and animals can live. Picture: Leonie Joubert.

A new gold rush: Big money, high stakes in spekboom sector

Leonie Joubert 31 August 2026

Parts of the country’s farmland are badly in need of restoration. Until now, spekboom restoration projects have been artisanal, but suddenly they are industrial in scale and tech giant Amazon is throwing its hat into the ring. (First in a three-part story)

If Sizeni Dlamini makes R300 from a day’s trade in second hand clothing and shoes, she’ll dip into it to buy basic groceries A bit more, and she’ll add a few more things to the food basket on her way home. More still, and she’ll replenish her business's stock. Picture: Leonie Joubert

Cooked: the life of informal traders in a heating world

Leonie Joubert 19 June 2026

Roadside traders in Durban’s inner city work in sweltering boiler room conditions. Taking a break in the heat of the day means they are also taking a break in their earnings. Solutions remain largely in policy documents, not tangible actions.

Nkosi Sonjica has a permit to catch fish here as his lineage has for generations. He also ferries tourists across the Mtentu River mouth. Picture: LEONIE JOUBERT

Wild Coast’s amaMpondo want greater part in management of ancestral lands

Leonie Joubert 23 April 2026

South Africa’s newly minted RAMSAR wetland on the Wild Coast shows that the notion of development is contested territory. The story of a Pondoland fisherman shows that while the bull elephants tussle, it’s the grass that gets trampled.

The government’s build-back-better approach to disaster relief is to provide building materials that are intended to be temporary. But homes in informal settlements are anything but short-lived. Pic: Leonie Joubert

The fourth horseman: extreme heat, a killer in informal settlements

Leonie Joubert 22 April 2026

Of the disasters that sweep through the Dakota informal settlement in south Durban, fire is feared most. Flood is the great leveller on lower ground. Wind gnaws at exposed homes. Heat, though, is stealthy and lethal. Research from this muggy East Coast neighbourhood shows how hellish shack life can be when temperature and humidity spike.

1. The cone pine (Pinus pianister) is one of the most aggressive invaders in the Western Cape. Photo: Supplied

Government funding is the final hurdle to unleash the weevil to control pine weeds

Leonie Joubert 13 April 2026

Of the disasters that sweep through the Dakota informal settlement in south Durban, fire is feared most. Flood is the great leveller on lower ground. Wind gnaws at exposed homes. Heat, though, is stealthy and lethal. In this muggy East Coast neighbourhood we see how hellish shack life can be when temperature and humidity spike.

Magical thinking vs the laws of physics — why science journalism can’t save us (Part 1)

Leonie Joubert 29 January 2026

Opinion: Science journalism is reporting on the symptoms of a disease whose origins lie in an economic model that’s at odds with the laws of physics. Until we address the root of the problem, we won’t bring down the fever of climate collapse, biodiversity loss or other planetary boundary crashes.

Piles of Sh*t (Part 4): A community’s fight against water contamination
BY LEONIE JOUBERT
19-08-2025
As countries fail to adopt a treaty to throttle plastic pollution globally, the story of Eastern Cape herders tackling the scourge of throwaway nappies in communal grazing unwittingly exposes a new form of pollution sweeping in across the region. Airborne microplastics may be to a critical SADC water factory what acid rain was to Europe and North America in the 1980s.

Plastic poisoning is the new ‘passive smoking’
BY LEONIE JOUBERT
28-08-2025

We’re only just beginning to realise how serious long-term exposure to microscopic plastic particles is likely to be for our health. While plastic polluting corporations lobby for business as usual, none of us is safe from the indestructible toxic sludge that’s been building in our air, water and food for the past 70 years — not even those doing the polluting.

Citizens want climate action, digital age might be how they get it
BY LEONIE JOUBERT
21-04-2025
Citizens across Africa want climate action. New research shows that internet connectivity can bridge the climate literacy gap and mobilise citizens to demand more from their governments in North-South negotiations. It can also boost ground-up participation in developmental decision-making as the continent’s climate becomes increasingly unstable.

Piles of sh*t (Part 3) — solutions to Africa’s nappy pollution crisis
BY LEONIE JOUBERT
30-07-2025
Indigenous stockmen in rural Matatiele were in a bind. Their herds were taking a beating because of a grim form of plastic pollution: soiled disposable nappies littering the communal veld and streams where their animals grazed … The local municipality doesn’t send its rubbish trucks this far out, though. Parents had few options for dealing with soiled nappies, other than to throw them in the veld and hope nature would take care of things.

Piles of sh*t (Part 2) — Corporates are at odds with our constitutional right to a healthy, safe environment
BY LEONIE JOUBERT
16-07-2025
The story of a cattle herding community tackling single-use nappy pollution in the Eastern Cape’s communal grasslands shows up the foundational flaw in the global use-and-discard economy. Consumers are expected to mop up the pollution coming out of its tailpipe, when powerful profit-taking corporations should be turning off the pollution at source.

Piles of sh*t (Part 1) — Communal farmers tackle nappy waste, and the climate crisis
BY LEONIE JOUBERT
15-07-2025
In rural Matiatiele, the stockmen are agitating for action over disposable nappies, which undermine their ability to be good stewards of shared grazing. It is a local issue with global implications, especially for the companies producing them.

SA government kills funding for best weapon against thirsty invasive trees
BY LEONIE JOUBERT
26-05-2025
Funding to deal with water-greedy alien trees has dried up. This is the latest in the writer’s series on her two-year journey around the country examining the impact of climate change. To follow her on this environmental adventure, and see all her remarkable stories and photo essays, go to Story Ark.

Agent Orange — cross-boundary cooperation is key to reversing the ‘tragedy of the commons’ in grasslands
BY LEONIE JOUBERT
In the latest installment of Story Ark, Joubert’s two year trek around the country to assess the impact of environmental change, she looks at the state of our grasslands and what needs to be done to save this essential resource.

Karoo Dust Bowl (Part I) — here come the dunes, a death knell for plant species and farmers’ livelihoods
BY LEONIE JOUBERT

See also: Karoo Dust Bowl (Part II) — Farmers fight back against reckless mining practices (DM, 29 January); Karoo Dust Bowl (Part III) — Drought-battered Richtersveld farmers fear destructive creep of mining (DM, January 30). Joubert is on a year-long round-the-country trip, so follow her as she picks up other stories about threats to our environment.

Reproducing Our Stories: We welcome the reproduction and republication of our stories in the interest of wider public access to quality journalism. If you are interested in republishing any of our work, please contact us in advance to request permission and discuss the appropriate terms of use.

Disclaimer: While we support the journalism that appears here, the author takes full responsibility for the content. Any views expressed do not necessarily represent those of the Henry Nxumalo Foundation or its partners.