Water way to go: SA is running into big trouble with its most precious resource

There are important contributors to South Africa's general wellbeing and economic recovery that many seem to remain oblivious to, and to almost regard as "someone else's problem to take care of" until they wake up to find a monster at their door, starring them straight in the eye. The impact of such contributors to everyday life is also taken as a given, until things go wrong.

Some people simply assume that someone else will always be there to take care of things until they're no longer there or that the resources they need to keep doing what they have always done "behind-the-scenes" get taken away which, in South Africa, often means "stolen" or "diverted" to plug a hole elsewhere. Among such contributors are the country's national ports - which I wrote about just over a week ago - or the rhinos and other wildlife whose numbers continue to fall due to poaching. But that is a story for another day.

This week I invited Tarryn Johnston, a water warrior, to share her experience of the fast-deteriorating state of South Africa's water bodies: rivers, dams, estuaries, beaches, etc. I couldn't resist doing so after I watched her documentary,?Hennops Revival – Riverlution ?and read her words:

"The state of our rivers is a direct reflection of a huge amount of pain, a very broken system and a massive disconnection to ourselves - as beings made up of mostly water."

In a separate discussion that I hosted, another friend, Marie-Louise Kellett, said: "The challenge is the lack of a holistic approach. Engineers see water as an inert substance that needs to be managed to prevent damage to infrastructure; communities, increasingly, see rivers as a place to dispose of waste and less for recreation; farmers see water as an input into their business and end up exporting water in the form of agricultural produce, and ecologists tend to simply focus on the nature aspect of water…and so on."

Many observers also agree that while government has good plans for water management, in theory, none of them translate into adequate allocation of skills and finances, or implementation on the ground.

It is no wonder that Tarryn couldn't resist wondering, when she stood waist deep in the middle of Gauteng's polluted Hennops River, if its troubled waters were not, in some way, a metaphor for current day South Africa. The Hennops has become a cesspool of death, rot, decay, sewage, industrial and human waste. It is no longer the river she and countless others used to swim in when they were kids, unaware that it would one day be turned through sustained human abuse and government neglect into a no-go body of water for anyone who values their own health.

Instead of carrying life, the Hennops has been turned into a toxic body of water for all the living creatures that swim in it and for the humans who used to turn to it for recreation.

"All the water that is on the planet is all the water that has ever been on the planet and all the water that is ever going to be on the planet.?We are?not?going to receive a fresh batch after this, this is it! We need to preserve our water, for life's sake, and for the future of the planet. The future started long ago. This is what we have done to ourselves and to generations to come. We need to reinvent the way we regard water, with urgency, because we simply no longer have the time," Tarryn points out.

South Africa's water challenges:

• Poverty issues and service delivery issues go hand in hand. It should therefore come as no surprise that South Africa's rivers have been turned into waste bins because not being able to access government services leaves millions of people with no waste removal, among other basic services. This, in turn, makes it seem "normal" to dump waste in rivers and other bodies of water, irrespective of the downstream environmental impact.
• Many resort to illegal dumping to dispose of waste because legal dumping sites are so few and far between.
• South Africans have, overall, not integrated the need to separate waste at the source because many find it too cumbersome, as there are very few facilities at which this can be done without too much effort. This also results in a lot of the waste finding itself illegally dumped in rivers, dams, estuaries, on beaches and other water bodies around the country. Environmental awareness is seen as an elite practice for people in the middle and upper classes, but even in the country's middle-class, much work needs to be done to raise awareness.?
• Corruption, greed, incompetence, and an inexplicable tendency to look for short cuts are at the forefront of the destruction and encroachment of our wetlands, with developments going up in floodplains and minimising the earth's capacity to absorb our rainwater. This has further resulted in more severe flooding due to the amount of water that gets directed towards stormwater drains, which all flow into the country's rivers.
• Failure by businesses to comply with legislation, especially regarding illegal dumping of, often, toxic material into rivers, dams, and other water bodies, is also a hive problem. It doesn't help that law enforcement is often lacking, which leads to the brazenness with which dumping often happens with people knowing that there will be no consequences for it.
• The maintenance of South Africa's water treatment plants leaves much to be desired. Many of them discharge megalitres of non-compliant effluent into rivers, dams, ocean fronts, estuaries, etc., with authorities doing little, if anything to stop the madness.??

The above are just some of the key problems faced by South Africa when it comes to the management of its water resources. If things keep deteriorating, the negative ripple effects on professional sports, fishing, commercial and subsistence agriculture, recreation, and the general health of communities around the country will be massive and require billions of rands to undo.

Are different levels of government aware of the problem and doing what they must to save the situation? Does the country appreciate the need to invest in appropriate skills and technologies to turn the situation around over time and boost economic output??How loud must the Tarryn Johnstons of our world still raise their voices to be heard?