KwaDukuza municipality (KDM) will be risking the safety of people visiting Ballito beaches this festive season if they continue to fail to provide proper backup to control drinking and misbehaviour.
Ethekwini Metro has committed to patrolling Tongaat beaches and alcohol-related incidents have since sharply declined.
High level intervention after chaos in recent years at Blythedale Beach brought on strict road blocks since December 1 where alcohol is confiscated and as a result, people’s behaviour has dramatically improved.
A recent visitor to Ballito was appalled by public drinking and obscene behaviour on the Ballito beachfront, totally ignored by local authorities, and she said her and her family would not come back.
People in Ballito openly drink, litter and urinate in public open spaces, make fires on the beach and change in and out of clothes behind rocks and cars.
There is also no regard for parking rules with people parking their cars in no-parking zones without consequences.
Even though public drinking is forbidden by municipal bylaws, the Courier has seen the only two KwaDukuza (KDM) lifeguards at the Salmon Bay tidal pool, not only turning a blind eye to an estimated 200 beachgoers consuming alcohol and making fires on the beaches, but also socialising with some of them on Friday, December 11.
Bongani Xulu, KDM lifeguard supervisor said lifeguards have been threatened in the past by aggressive, intoxicated people and have been advised, for their own safety not to confront them but just make a call to the control room.
He said the correct procedure would be to advise beachgoers that they are not allowed to drink and then make a call to the emergency control room, who in turn should send traffic and crime prevention units, backed up by SAPS if necessary.
However Maretha Short, a regular holidaymaker from Vereeniging, could not get the emergency control room to send back-up over the weekend when a group of young people misbehaved on Compensation Beach Road.
Xulu said people go to Ballito where they can still get away with drinking alcohol on the beach.
He said keeping alcohol off beaches was a matter of life and death.
“Water and alcohol do not mix,” said Xulu in a stern warning to the public.
Last year a man drowned while drinking and partying out of control at Westbrook Beach.
Xulu said because drunk parents neglected their children, alcohol was the leading cause of near drownings in young children and children getting lost.
He said sadly, lost children who have not been reunited with their parents by the end of the day had to be handed over to the SAPS.
“That is very hard for us to do and we go out of our way to try and find a lost child’s parents,” said Xulu.
He said intoxicated adults typically drowned in waist-deep tidal pools because they “forgot to stand” or they often rolled over, swallowed water and drowned, because they were too drunk to stand up.
The KDM emergency control room number is 032-946-2711 and the UIP emergency number is 086-111-1588.
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