Catastrophe: Wildlife officials Henk Louw and Maya Stauch collect dead fish in a Cape estuary, where more than 20 tons of fish have died so far. Photo: Rogan Ward, Cape Argus

The cost of 30 years of pollution and other environmental abuse of the Rietvlei Wetland Reserve is 80 tons of dead fish, perhaps more, say the city of Cape Town’s environmental managers.

The city has been cleaning up at this popular recreational water body for two days. It is a race against time to collect the dead fish before they decompose and become a serious health risk to humans.

Managers say the long-term ecological impacts of the mass die-off that apparently started on Christmas Day are, as yet, unknown and unquantifiable, but they will be serious… Cape Argus

Five die in spate of shack fires

Five people have died in a series of devastating fires in informal settlements in Cape Town.

A mother, aged 21 years, and her two sons died in an early morning fire in RR Section in Khayelitsha on Tuesday.

City disaster management spokesperson Wilfred Solomons said the fire razed eight shacks, leaving 24 people homeless.

A man died in a fire that left seven people homeless in DT Section, Khayelitsha, early on Tuesday.

A second man died when four shacks were gutted by a blaze in Black City, Nyanga, yesterday. Sixteen people were left without homes.

A fire in Mew Way, Khayelitsha, destroyed a man’s home before 1pm on Tuesday.

“In all cases, we asked the Red Cross to provide blankets and food,” Solomons said.

The city’s human settlement division is to give those who lost their homes basic building materials. - Cape Times

Three die in Cape Town fires

Three people have died in two separate fires in Cape Town. Two people this morning burned to death in fire at their house in Bonteheuwel.

An emergency services spokesperson says the two people were alone at home at the time. The cause of the fire, which completely gutted the house, is not known.

A woman also died in a fire that destroyed four shacks last night in an informal settlement in Gugulethu. A fire department spokesperson says eight people were displaced by the fire. SABC

Grim Xmas for Mount Ayliff & Ravensmead residents

The community of Mount Ayliff in the Eastern Cape was facing a dire Christmas following last weekend’s tornado. The victims were offered food, clothes, blankets and temporary shelter.

Hundreds of homes were destroyed in Dutyini Village and about 20 people were injured during the tornado. Some families still have not recovered from the last tornado in 1999 which killed 20 people.

The latest tornado took people’s homes and children’s new clothes for Christmas. Officials brought tents for victims to live in temporarily. Construction has already begun on housing for tornado victims. Housing officials say more departments will have to be roped in to fast track the process of rebuilding.

Villagers are happy they have a chance of an almost normal Christmas, and they hope that there will be fewer natural disasters in years to come.

Grim Christmas for Ravensmead residents

Eighty families in Ravensmead in Cape Town will have very little to celebrate this Christmas. Living in bad conditions and sharing a dilapidated marquee, they say they are finding it difficult just to stay healthy.

The families were evicted from a school that they were using as shelter. They used to be backyard dwellers. Many of the children are suffering from TB and it is spreading like wild fire because they have to share the same space. Johannes Bastian, of the Ravensmead Civic Organisation, said the conditions are exacerbated by excessive heat and rats running free in the tent.

People say they have become a soft target for gangsters. Many say their only wish for Christmas is some food and someone to help them. They hope the authorities will step in soon and give them something to look forward to in the new year. SABC

Mother City on the road to disaster - report

Cape Town is on a development path that will never solve the city’s problems, but will make many social, economic and environmental problems worse.

It can either continue on its path of economic growth that benefits a few, or it can radically alter its development agenda towards shared growth.

This was the finding of the State of Cape Town 2006 report released by the city of Cape Town’s strategic and planning directorate on Tuesday…

Mother City on the road to disaster

To reduce urban sprawl, Cape Town needs more dense settlements. This would also reduce the cost of providing piped water, sewers, drains and roads.

Regarding the city’s economy, major problems are “jobless growth”, a gross geographic product that has been below four percent for the past four years and a mismatch between skills available and skills needed.

Unemployment in Cape Town had grown from 13 percent in 1997, to 23 percent in 2004, with a drop last year to 20.7 percent The city needs a growth rate of seven percent, or the creation of over 40 000 formal jobs, to absorb the new entrants to the labour market.

Cape Town faces particularly acute pressure on key environmental resources: water is under severe pressure, levels of air and water pollution are increasing, seawater quality is declining and the generation of waste had reached an alarming 60 percent per capita increase since 1999.

The city must “mainstream sustainability”, which will include drawing up a comprehensive energy plan, fast-tracking the introduction of sustainable technologies. It must support a green economy and introduce financial incentives to encourage this.

It is critical social development strategies are integrated with economic development, and existing social development structures in civil society are formalised and linked with one another.

While the average prevalence of HIV/Aids (16 percent) is well below the national average of 30 percent, in Nyanga and Khayelitsha its prevalence is as high or higher than the South African average.

Because of the complex factors underlying the epidemic, a multi-sectoral approach to the disease is needed.

It is critical that the council forms partnerships with other authorities, business and civil society to create an “integrated leadership”. - Cape Times

Cape railway squatters to be relocated

View the 2 000 Khayelitsha families living in shacks alongside a railway line to be relocated to a serviced site near Mfuleni by March, says the city’s housing portfolio head, Dan Plato…

Most of the shacks are built on sandy and steep slopes, and have no water or toilets. Many line the railway tracks.

Plato said water and toilet services at the relocation site were almost complete.

InternAfrica would like to point out that Mfuleni has many shacks of it’s own built on sandy steep slopes…

Metrorail said the required distance between a house and a railway line had to be at least 20 metres. Some shacks in the area are 5m from the tracks.

However, community members in the past resisted the city’s court interdicts and relocation plans for the illegal occupiers.

“City officials have held talks with the concerned residents and convinced them to relocate. We never experienced any problems. They obliged and were happy to be relocated,” said Plato…

Resident Nolutho Mazantsana, whose one-roomed shack faces the railway line, said: “This sounds good for us all here, our conditions of living are pathetic. Our children use the railway line as a playground. We feel forced to guard them carefully or take them along wherever we go.

“It would be better if the city can relocate us to a site with toilets and water, at least.”

Another resident, Mthiwekhaya Mlanjeni, said: “Although I never heard of the relocation plan, I don’t object to it for obvious reasons. But the concern is whether the city will be moving us from bad to worse.”

Cape Flats aquifer under threat from pollution

The Cape Flats aquifer, which has the potential to supply Cape Town with billions of litres of fresh water a year, is under growing threat from chemical pollution, say experts.

The chemicals, among others, that have found their way down into the water-bearing rock include nitrates from human waste, cyanide from industry and pesticides sprayed by local farmers.

Covering about 630 square kilometres, the aquifer lies under the coastal sands that stretch from the Cape Peninsula to the inland mountains…

The threats from this are:

* Low-to-medium risk pollution sources, which occur in large areas of the Cape Flats. These include low-income residential areas such as Guguletu and Khayelitsha, as well as the Philippi farming areas; and

* So-called “nodal sources” of pollution, including waste-water treatment works and numerous waste-disposal sites…

The paper also notes the provision of adequate sanitation to the numerous people living in informal settlements on the Cape Flats “is prominent and fundamental to public health”. SAPA

Premier bats for dodgy eco-estate

Eastern Cape environmental officials are under huge pressure to approve housing developments in the cash-strapped province, as developers eye its pristine coastline.

Environmentalists fear political pressure may lead to uncontrolled development, as officials are strong-armed into cutting procedural corners… M&G

PE flood victims still homeless

R400 million is to be made available over the next three years to upgrade afflicted areas

In August this year torrential rains fell in Port Elizabeth and the surrounding areas, rendering over 5 000 people homeless. Those living in informal settlements were hardest hit.

As a result R400 million is to be made available over the next three years to upgrade and move residents from the afflicted areas. Yet residents are still in the dark as to what their future holds.

Since the shacks were washed away and residents rescued, the water level have dropped but not much else has changed. The metro says 300 hundred families have since been moved to serviced sites - this is news to a number of residents who have lived here for over 20 years - they believe talk is cheap.

Nkuzola Mpolweni, a resident on the Chatty flood plain, says: “The councillor did mention the money at the last meeting but nothing has been made clear to us as to what will happen.”

Chris Kunwayo, another resident, says: “All the people affected were taken to halls and this is where they have stayed. The municipality says they are going to move the people but they are still waiting.”

Meanwhile, the metro has admitted that there is a problem when it comes to communication. The people living in the flood plain have been identified as priorities but this is little consolation for those who have been waiting for three years for a house. SABC

RDP houses fall short of minister’s targets

Dyantyi blames bureaucracy – but depiste this, he is not reluctant to make more promises - he has vowed to build 25,000 housing units a year to curb the province’s 300,000 backlog. One of the elated beneficiaries is Nomakhephu Mkhosi (82) was one of 115 people handed keys to their new homes in Mandela Park. She applied for a government subsidised house eight years ago.

Mkhosi says she was initially sent from pillar to post and had almost given up hope. “I am very happy to receive this house.” says Mkhosi. But there are still many more waiting for houses and Dyantyi has promised 500 houses by December -or resign.

Dyanti says: “Today we are giving less than 500 houses, so surely it is a disappointment to them.” SABC

SAFM - Zimbabwe’s shanty towns

Zimbabwe’s government is apparently planning to bulldoze shanty towns and informal settlements yet again, and so soon after the last actions which left 700,000 people homeless. What’s behind this? Listen to Morning Talk on Thursday..

Family of five killed in Eastern Cape fire

Five people, including four children, have been burnt to death in their house at Libode in the Eastern Cape.

Sherine Reddy, a police spokesperson, says the victims were asleep in their house when it caught fire. She says the cause of the fire is not yet known. Reddy says an old man was with his grandchildren - aged seven, four, three and a six-month-old baby boy.

She says police are investigating the circumstances surrounding the cause of the fire. SABC

Best thing for the homeless since Gettysburg

By John Scott

If you wish to urinate or defecate, you may do so in a public place if a toilet “is not reasonably available”.

This is one of the many liberal concessions made in the city council’s new bylaw relating to streets and public places. Yet for some reason, people are still staging protests against it because it allegedly victimises the homeless.

Were I a homeless person, I would hail it as the best thing since the Gettysburg Address.

There you are, in the middle of the city, resting after having done a good day’s begging, and the clock strikes 5pm, time for all the public toilets to be locked and bolted. Suddenly you have a bodily urge.

Before the adoption of the new bylaw you might have wondered what to do, besides crossing your legs and holding your breath. But now you can simply drop your pants, with the law on your side.

Or let’s say you are feeling dirty and badly in need of a personal clean-up. In terms of the bylaw, you may not bath or wash yourself in public, unless a bath or shower, once again, “is not reasonably available”, in which case you may. Even if a bath or shower is reasonably available but you don’t have the means to pay for it, feel free to strip down under the street hydrant, anyway.

This is revolutionary stuff, and there’s more. A person may not “appear in the nude or expose his or her genitalia”, except in “areas where nudity is permitted”.

It could happen that once a person has discovered where these areas are, they do not coincide with those areas where toilets and showers are not reasonably available.

In which case you may well have the right to expose whatever is necessary in the course of your public ablutions.

Unfortunately there are still paragraphs in the new law that don’t cover every exigency in the daily life of a homeless person. For instance, you may not start or keep a fire in a public place, when starting and keeping a fire in a public place is sometimes the only way to avoid freezing to death in winter.

And though you are permitted to sleep overnight in an informal settlement’s shelter, no mention is made of shop doorways, bridges or empty drainage pipes, which offer some protection from the elements if you can’t get to an informal settlement in time.

Perhaps the council would consider making these small amendments to the law.

Though very few homeless people own cars, it also seems churlish to|prohibit them from residing “in a motor vehicle for longer than 24 hours”, if they do in fact find permanent accommodation in one.

The law is strong on begging. It says no person shall beg from or closely follow a person “after the person has given a negative response to such begging”. But all homeless persons know that some persons weaken after a bit of pestering and do give something.

Maybe the law should be more specific about the negativity of the response. Beggars would know that no finally meant no if the beggee shouted the officially authorised words “voertsek jou bliksem”, which are respected by all, and legally understood. Cape Times

Cape waterbomb campaign boosted

The Western Cape’s network of fire alarm cameras has been increased to alert waterbombers even faster to shack and wildfires in the province, disaster workers said on Wednesday. SAPA