WE ARE CURRENTLY subjected to water restrictions, which are actually a total farce if you consider that the hundreds and hundreds of houses in Bhekuzulu Extension 16, the low-cost houses that are commonly known as “Sasko Area”, that all those houses are without water meters.
That’s right. No water meters. They built the houses and made no provision, apparently, for water meters, presumably on the understanding, or misunderstanding, that if you turn on the tap, water comes out, therefore there must be water, and since everybody is entitled to free water what’s the point of installing a meter?
The short-sighted stupidity of politicians, who want to garner votes by providing houses to the masses via low-cost housing projects, boggles my little mind. I have seen chickens with more foresight, and these were in Spar, headless and gutted and lying in a fridge.
“Hello, Chicken,” I said, who do you fancy to win the Rugby World Cup?”
And the chicken said nothing.
Ask a politician, “So, having provided houses to the masses, how do you propose to provide them with water without increasing the town’s capacity to store water in the first place?”
The politicians are saying nothing.
We are seriously in the brown stuff, and will be even deeper in it quite soon when we can’t flush our toilets. Up to here, we’ll be. We in Vryheid are heading towards where the people in Eshowe have been for months.
My sister lives there. There’s no water from 8:00am to 6:00pm. It’s turned off.
The Ladysmith Gazette reports this week that Ladysmith is now subject to turn offs. Water flows in Ladysmith’s taps only from 4:00am to 10:00am, and then from 4:00pm to 8:00pm.
Yep, we’re in the dwang.
And again, if it rains soon, and the dams are replenished, even partly replenished, the politicians will smugly sit back and say, “So, what were you worried about. Look it’s raining, it always does eventually,” as if they’re wiser than us, as if they were partly responsible for the rain.
Back in the 1980s I became aware that Klipfontein Dam’s storage capacity could be increased simply by raising the level of the spillway. I think I was told by the late Ray Scannell, who was the Natal Parks Board officer who managed Klipfontien Dam when the Parks Board took over the facilities.
I think it was old Ray who told me that the provision was that there had to be three consecutive years when the dam fell below 27% of its capacity, before Water Affairs would consider raising the spillway wall.
It should be noted that PW Botha was at the helm then, and Nelson Mandela was in jail. PW Botha and the Minister of Water Affairs at the time, had no clue, had no hint, had no inkling, were ignorantly blind to the future demands that urbanisation would place on the country’s water resources, let alone on Klipfontein Dam. No flippen clue.
When Klipfontein Dam was planned back in the 1970s, I imagine that it was forecast that it would provide for a slowish growth in Vryheid for the next half century, plus be a storage dam for Ulundi, the capital of what PW was hoping would become the bantustan of KwaZulu.
We all know that history thought otherwise.
Vryheid as a residential town has exploded. There are very few new businesses than there were 30 years ago, but there are thousands and thousands more households, each demanding water, and especially free water.
And our storage capacity to fulfill these demands has not increased by one single litre. Not one.
In fact, our storage capacity has decreased.
I was out at Bloemveld Dam over the weekend and the sight is alarming. I have never seen the water level so low. And when you can see the bottom of the dam exposed as it is, you realise just how shallow the dam is. When it’s full, it looks beautifully abundant, but that is deceptive – the waters are shallow right up into the upper reaches of the dam, and here’s the thing, every year it gets shallower and shallower as more and more silt washes in with the rain.
The same applies to Grootgewacht and Klipfontien dams. Look at Klipfontein dam now that it’s less than 35% full – it is mostly shallows, and the upper end where the Wit Umfolozi enters the dam is getting shallower and shallower, decreasing the original storage capacity of the dam.
I don’t think I have ever been really, really thirsty, dangerously thirsty. I’ve been thirsty enough that the first swigs of beer or Coke burn the throat but you find you just can’t stop, I’ve been thirsty that when I’ve cupped my hand under running tap it seemed at first that I could swallow for ever. But I’ve never been really, really lip-cracked, tongue-swollen, kidney-failing thirsty.
Eskom can load-shed all it likes and we can cope.
But when they begin water shedding, when there literally is no water coming out of the taps, then we are in the dwang. And unless the capacity of our storage dams are increased, and soon, that’s where we are heading.
Trust me.
