By Rosemary Anderson
South Africa’s hospitality and tourism industry faces a myriad of challenges. But there is one battle we should never have to fight: having to persuade the authorities to obey South Africa’s own water laws.
Yet increasingly, that is exactly what communities and businesses are forced to do.
The National Water Act is clear. Section 19 places a duty on those responsible for pollution to take reasonable measures to prevent it from occurring, continuing or recurring. Section 151 goes further: it is a criminal offence to unlawfully and intentionally or negligently, through an act or omission, pollute or be likely to pollute a water resource.
That word omission is important. Allowing known sewage infrastructure failures to continue polluting our rivers cannot simply become accepted as another municipal service-delivery problem. It is simply a criminal offence.
We are told to save water. Government must do the same.
South Africans are continually reminded that we live in a water-scarce country. We are urged to conserve every precious drop. Money is spent on campaigns telling citizens to save water, while reported municipal leaks can continue for weeks, months and sometimes years.
At the same time, failing sewerage infrastructure is allowed to discharge raw sewage into the very rivers and dams containing the water we are being told to protect.
You cannot ask citizens to save water with one hand while allowing it to be wasted and polluted with the other.
For South Africa’s inland waterfront tourism industry, the pollution consequences are particularly serious. Our rivers and dams should be enormous secondary economic assets. Waterfront hotels, restaurants, resorts, lodges, boat building and boat sales, and recreational facilities have the potential to create thousands more jobs and attract substantial private investment.
When raw sewage enters a dam or river, environmental damage quickly becomes economic damage. Tourism suffers. Investment is discouraged. Existing jobs are threatened and potential new jobs are never created.
And the damage compounds.
Sewage carries high nutrient loads, particularly nitrogen and phosphorus. This nutrient enrichment accelerates eutrophication and creates conditions in which invasive aquatic plants such as water hyacinth and water lettuce can proliferate rapidly. So the consequences of failing sanitation infrastructure do not end when sewage enters the water. The resulting nutrient pollution can turn already compromised waterways into masses of invasive vegetation – degrading ecosystems, further restricting boating and recreation, and making waterfront tourism businesses even more difficult to operate viably.
And then comes another, deeply painful blow: the social-media attacks telling people to stay away and comments like “go there if you like driving your boat in human waste – go for it” and other damaging comments. For operators already fighting every day to survive on a waterway contaminated through no fault of their own, those words hurt and cause damage – and they cost jobs.
What is often unseen behind those headlines is the extraordinary passion of these river and dam communities. Locals, businesses and NGOs give countless hours and their own money to report spills, fight invasive plants, engage authorities and pursue legal action.
These river and dam communities choose to be part of the solution – criticism does not clean the water. They are fighting for waterways they love, businesses they have built and, most importantly, the livelihoods of the people they employ. So please, support those trying to hold on and make a difference. If you are angry – and you should be – direct that anger at the authorities allowing sewage to enter our waterways, not at the tourism businesses fighting to survive despite it. Right now, these dam and river communities need support – far more than they need damaging and very hurtful social media comments.
Instead of expanding, employing more people and contributing to economic growth, waterfront operators are spending extraordinary amounts of time trying to protect the natural resource upon which their businesses depend. In a country desperate for economic growth and employment, this makes no sense.
Why must NGOs make government obey government’s laws?
Perhaps the greatest irony is that when repeated engagement fails, citizens increasingly have to turn to NGOs and NPOs for help to compel public authorities to do what legislation already requires them to do.
Citizens are effectively having to seek protection from pollution by asking the courts to make organs of state comply with laws created by the state itself.
That should concern every South African.
We do not need more legislation. We already have legislation. We need implementation.
Failed sewer pump stations, leaking pipelines and overloaded wastewater treatment works require competent technical management, preventative maintenance and rapid intervention.
But when authorities know infrastructure is failing and pollution continues unabated, an engineering problem becomes a governance and accountability problem. South Africans understand that ageing infrastructure cannot be rebuilt overnight. What we cannot accept is chronic sewage pollution and water wastage becoming normalised.
Government does not need another campaign telling South Africans that water is precious.
We know it is.
Now demonstrate that you know it too.
Fix the infrastructure. Stop the pollution. Enforce the law – regardless of whether the polluter is a private company, an individual or an organ of state.
Protect our waterways. Protect our tourism industry. Protect the jobs they create.
South Africans should not need NGOs and courts to force authorities to obey their own laws.
Authorities, please walk the talk.
