“We are creating a breeding ground for super diseases,” says Andre Johnson, who lives downstream from the sewerage plant. He recently caught fish in the dam that were covered in sores. “Things are becoming strange.”
It reads like dialogue from a Stephen King novel, but Mr Johnson is in fact a real life person living in real life South Africa living down stream from a real life sewerage plant catching fish covered with real life sores.
Maybe if you live in close proximity to a sewerage plant and decide to go fishing this might be what you should expect, but I guess Mr Johnson’s hope is that the plant TREATS the sewerage before it flows into the rivers and turns the fish into zombies. Fat chance of that happening - cadre deployment and affirmative action has put pay to that aspiration.
Vying with the shit is of course all the chemical pollutants from the mining industry that have been left to seep unchecked and untreated into the rivers for years. These chemical cocktails include sulphate, iron, aluminum, toxic heavy metals such as cadmium and cobalt, and radioactive elements.
Don’t you love that last one – “radioactive elements”! It’s a good thing ISIS doesn’t know about the Vaal River; all the ingredients for a dirty bomb are floating serenely through the north of the beloved country; all you need is a jerry can filled with water and a fuse – job done. So if you see a group of ninjas driving Toyota bakkies asking for directions to the Vaal Dam contact your nearest police station. Actually don’t bother; its not likely that someone will pick up the phone.
So who is going to solve this problem, you may ask?
“Nobody” is the short answer. Until there is a complete overhaul of local government and a clean sweep of those who run municipalities as their personal fiefdoms before eventually bankrupting them, absolutely nothing is going to happen. There is more chance of one of those strange little fishies walking out of the Vaal Dam singing Die Stem than a co-ordinated plan being implemented to reverse the massive biological degradation of South Africa’s most important resource – its water.
And until that day comes (the plan of course!) my sincere hope is that Mr Johnson doesn’t host any fish braais!
Out.