ANTHONY TURTON | Cholera sewage crisis predicted years ago smiting SA

This week, our national sewage crisis really began to bite. A media storm has erupted over the cholera outbreak in Hammanskraal, while some families are now grieving for their dead relatives.

It is important that we start this story by remembering the dead, because they were breadwinners in families, all doing their best to survive the tribulations of our times. They died unnecessarily, the victims of the slow onset disaster I spoke of in 2008 at a conference titled “Science Real and Relevant”.

At that conference, reference was made to three water quality challenges that we, in the dwindling aquatic sciences community, were all too aware of, but unable to speak about.

We noted that our systems were failing rapidly, with much of our hard infrastructure in the water sector approaching the end of its useful design life. We noted with alarm the loss of skills. We noted the loss of dilution capacity in all our rivers after the first national water resource strategy (NWRS), mandated by the National Water Act (NWA), indicated that we had allocated 98% of all the water in all our rivers and dams, as far back as 2002.

From these sets of data, a simple conclusion was drawn – SA was heading for a slow onset disaster unless we could convince our political leadership that we needed to do things differently.

Fact # 1 – The SA economy ran out of water in 2002 when the NWRS revealed that we had already allocated 98% of all the water we have legally available in terms of the NWA. This means that we cannot convince investors to have confidence in our future.

Fact # 2 – We produce more than 5-billion litres of sewage daily, all of which is discharged into our rivers and dams, only about 10% of which is treated to a standard that makes it safe for direct human contact.

 Fact # 3 – The Green and Blue Drop reporting system was suspended by Nomvula Mokonyane when the data was showing trends in the failure of our sewage treatment works. This is like a pilot in a commercial airliner switching off the radar screen because the information being revealed was becoming uncomfortable. This is the undeniable genesis of the deaths we are seeing today. 

Fact # 4 – Because of Facts # 1 and 2 combined, our tsunami of sewage can no longer be diluted in our rivers. In fact, more than 60% of all our large dams are now eutrophic, with highly enriched water breeding toxic cyanobacteria, all thriving off the warming water and growing flow of nutrients from sewage. This means that cholera is only one of the risks we are facing from raw sewage in our rivers. For example, Hepatitis A is a waterborne pathogen directly related to sewage-contaminated rivers.

Fact # 5 – The current minister of water and sanitation Senzo Mchunu was brave enough to reinstate the Green and Blue Drop reporting system, which has now shown that more than 90% of our wastewater treatment works are dysfunctional. I want to publicly support him as he tries to rebuild the trust that was destroyed by a previous minister.

People are dying as a direct consequence of decisions made by a former minister, who clearly failed in her custodial role. She must ultimately be held to account for her dereliction of duty.

Just this week, a spokesperson for the presidency noted that his office was unable to intervene in another crisis, because the cooperative governance clause in our constitution prevented one sphere of government from intervening in the activities of another sphere. We must challenge this constitutional weakness and seek clarification from the appropriate court. How many more lives must be lost to the absurdity of legal protection for those in power, while their activities are clearly not in the best interest of society?

From the depths of despair in the families of those whose lives have been lost to an entirely preventable illness, let us find the strength to rally as one and shout out, “enough is enough”.

• Prof Turton is a water expert from the Centre for Environmental Management at the University of the Free State.