A gentle, decent man who contributed to a better environment professionally and personally

Wherever Roger was, his pipe wasn\'t far away.

Grahamstown, E. Cape, SA – The Rowswell family arrived from England in 1956 and settled in Somerset West. After schooling and obtaining a number of diplomas, Roger started work at the local municipality. Among his duties was helping lay out the hiking paths in the Helderberg Nature Reserve.

He moved to the Cape Town municipality, where he worked at the Blackheath water treatment plant.

Those 2 municipal positions – working in conservation and water treatment – led to his personal passions, nature, the outdoors, canoeing, sailing and camping out, and his professional life, effluent treatment.
In 1983 he applied for a position at the Leather Industries Research Institute (LIRI) in Grahamstown. He bought a house at 4-A Darling Street where he lived for the rest of his life.

Roger was in charge of the Environmental Division at LIRI, where he advised most of the tanneries in South and Southern Africa on their effluent and sludge treatment needs. Not only did he give advice on how to treat their effluent, but he also designed their effluent plants.

Never computer literate, but a very good draugtsman... plans for his effluent treatment systems were hand drawn.

Roger was never one for computer technology, so he painstakingly hand drew all these plans. He was part of many Water Research Commission research projects, the biggest of which involved the construction of a pilot effluent treatment plant at LIRI. The research results from this effluent treatment plant led him to design a number of different effluent treatment plants for various tanneries around the country.

Roger was often on the receiving end of a number of pranks from students who carried out research at LIRI. One such incident involved the students emptying 5 – 10kg of washing powder into the pilot effluent treatment plant. The aerators caused this to generate an excess of foam, and when the wind picked up, this foam started blowing all over the place. Of course, the students never let on that they had done it, and Roger spent many hours with LIRI staff in their experimental tannery discussing what chemicals they must have used that could have possibly caused the foaming.

When LIRI closed down in 2000, Roger opened his own consulting business, Tannery Environmental Consultancy Services (TECS), and continued to advise the tanning industry on best practices for their effluent and sludge treatment.

Conservation and hiking were passions.... a view of the Eastern Cape countryside around Grahamstown.

Roger’s passions in life were red wine, his pipe, and his love of nature. His pipe was never far from him, and when he lit it up, was often teased by the younger staff and students at LIRI that there must be a bush fire nearby as they could smell a lot of smoke. He spent most weekends outdoors in nature and was instrumental in developing a nature trail, the Oldenburghia Trail, named after a tree endemic to the Eastern Cape, which runs from the outskirts of Grahamstown into the Thomas Baines Nature Reserve. He also spent countless hours eradicating alien invasive species of plants and was determined to try to preserve natural fauna and flora as much as possible.

Roger personally helped me in the early days of carrying out my research. We used to use the LIRI pool car and travel to King Tanning in King Williams’ Town to collect sludge and effluent samples, which was a rather messy and smelly affair. The plastic drums containing all the samples were loaded into the LIRI station wagon, and with all the windows open so that we could breathe, we endured the 1.5-hour trip back to Grahamstown. He often said that it would be rather interesting if we were in an accident, as we would end up covered in tannery effluent and sludge. Of course, Roger was not very popular when some other LIRI staff member wanted to use the pool car the next day.

Towards the end of his life, he suffered health problems, which he didn’t share with family and friends, and when his brother and sister-in-law realized how ill he was and moved him to Cape Town, he died shortly afterwards in Tygerberg Hospital.

His ashes were scattered in Thomas Baines Nature Reserve by members of his hiking club.

Roger will be remembered as a very gentle man, who went about his work and his hobbies with dedication and passion, and whose legacies will endure – from the stinkwood tree he planted at his first home in Fagan Street, Somerset West, to the Oldenburghia Trail, to the many tannery effluent treatment plants still in use.