RIVERMATTERS

Green algae flourishing in the near-stagnant Vaal River, summer 2012

The Vaal River in central South Africa certainly deserves its name: the word in Afrikaans means murky or cloudy. But this season there is an ironic twist to things. The river has gone bright green and is totally opaque due to the growth of algae. Bacterial growth is flourishing on the nutrients in the water, phosphates and nitrates, resulting in eutrophication.

Not the murky river any more – the yucky river. Despite being the third-largest river in the country and the one that supports our urban heartland, the Vaal is a dirty industrial ditch and there’s not much hope in sight that it will be cleaned up anytime soon. Instead of attending to the green woes of our planet, our politicians and businessmen are busy lining their pockets with the golden wealth of the country.

Oddly enough the immediate cause of the pollution is that we have had both too little rainfall and too much! Rains this season (2011-12) have been poor and very scattered. The river is very sluggish and the water is warm. But last year (2010-2011) we had a massive flood. This cleaned out the invader weeds including the massive floating mats of water hyacinth and parsley weed. Noxious as these plants are, they do one important thing for the river: they suck up the nutrients and improve water quality. With no weeds, there has been nothing to perform this job and the algal bacteria have taken advantage.

You just can’t win! Drought and flood have combined to pollute the Vaal with organics. What we can’t see are the inorganic suspended solids – the cyanide from mines, the mercury from factories, home detergents, plastics and other chemicals and pollutants that float in suspension, flutter about, or creep along the bottom as a murderous sludge.

When the Vaal got its name from the early Voortrekkers nearly 200 years ago there was none of this gunk in the river. It was dyed a murky grey-green by surrounding vegetation and minerals leached from the geology. When it flooded it turned browner from silt. That was all pretty clean stuff. Now we are witnessing one of the most unlovely products of industrial civilisation and human carelessness: a murky river carrying all our waste to the sea to kill the fishes.

The dilution capacity of all our rivers is being seriously taxed and we are making the water on which our lives depend unusable except at great clean-up cost. The free ecological services performed by nature can no longer cope. Now we must pay heavily for potable water. How’s that for bad economics?

Read a report on what the authorities are NOT doing about it while “taking samples”.

When the official weather service in South Africa gets it wrong, will its forecasters serve jail time?

The ANC government’s repressive clampdown on information continues – this time in the realm of total absurdity. Believe it or not, they are trying to control weather information! If you give a weather warning without written permission of the SA Weather Service you could be found guilty of a high crime and sentenced to as R10million fine or 10 years in jail.

These stupid provisions are contained in a new weather amendment bill (amend the weather?)  – which of course has the rest of the world howling with laughter and derision.

How’s that for absurdity! The official weather service will gain a monopoly on weather information at the expense of all of us who need weather reports from all quarters as well as interpretations – including local warnings of tornados, flood downpours and so on. Consider that the SA Weather Service often issues weather warnings itself which turn out to be WRONG (eg warnings of severe thunderstorms which don’t happen).

Weather officials have defended this Bill by saying it is designed to prevent “panic”. Now tell me, when the weather service gets it wrong, will its forecasters also serve jail time?

It’s ridiculous, yes, but the more sinister aspect of this legislation is what it says about the ANC’s mindset and its “national democratic revolution” (NDR). A spectre is stalking South Africa – the spectre of Stalinism.

Once again we have the ANC introducing repressive legislation to protect the state and its bureaucrats. The weather bill forms part of the NDR which proposes that the state has complete control of information and everything else. This Act falls into a pattern of information control and propaganda both aimed to give the state a monopoly over information and prevent the media and others from drawing attention to the poor services provided by the state.

It is also anti-business and anti-free enterprise. What else could you expect from party minions trained up under the regime of Soviet leader Brezhnev and the nomenclatura who were impervious to glasnost (openness)? During the Chernobyl nuclear meltdown, officials got their own families out of the danger zone without informing the rest of the population what was going on. In precisely this way, information restrictions promote cover-ups and corruption (you want the information? bribe someone in office).

Also included in the Bill going before Parliament is a restriction on reporting pollution – in other words, reports of, say, sewage in the Vaal could be made illegal. We have to fight this absurd and sinister Bill tooth and nail and enlist as many supporters as possible. The next thing we will see is that the ANC takes over the role of God and actually controls the weather… this is merely the first step towards universal self-delusion.

Read on – here’s a case in point.

Cyclone coming 15 Jan 2012

As I write this, a (small) cyclone has entered our weathermap in the Indian ocean. The picture comes from Kobus Botha’s excellent weatherphotos website, which is private and independent, and is the most popular weather service in South Africa. In the first 13 days of 2012 the site had more than 1 million hits.

The cyclone is likely to track northwards towards Mozambique but will probably affect weather in northern KwaZulu-Natal especially the Pongola area. This will happen midweek. The Tugela is likely to be affected by rains in northern KZN (Buffalo). The system could possibly bring rain to the Vaal catchment too.

If I were to issue this weather warning under the proposed proposed weather Act I could be found guilty of causing alarm face trial. Would the same happen to Kobus Botha for supplying me with the information?

Anyway, let’s make officials responsible for their weather forecasts – on pain of long jail terms!