‘Our planet is beset with a cancer which threatens our very existence… [It] was engendered by our abuse of our lakes, streams, rivers, and oceans… and like any other disease, it can kill us.
We have ignored this cancer for so long that the romance of environmental concern is already fading in the shadow of the grim realities of lakes, rivers and bays where all forms of life have been smothered by untreated wastes, and oceans which no longer provide us with food.’
– Senator Ed Muskie of Maine, Arguing for the passage of the Clean Water Act in 1972, {Congressional Record Service, 1972 Legislative History}
At first appearance the river in the photos – a literal stone’s throw from where we stay – which runs down to an estuary (though it’s known locally as a lagoon), is a thing of great beauty. People regularly come to take photos of it, particularly at sunset when the flaming orange Cape sky provides a dramatic backdrop to this part of the coast. On still days, the reflections in the lagoon are quite startling in their clarity, and the magnetic pull of being by and in water draws both locals and tourists here with equal strength, particularly at the weekends. We’ve watched the changing course of this waterway for over twenty years; seen it shift and adjust with every year of storms and seasons; observed it as it’s ebbed and flowed, revealing and creating sand bars, islands, shallow wading paths and deeper canyons where the water might reach up to your chest and higher. I’ve probably taken hundreds of photos of it myself at different times of day: in the early mornings as hopeful light filters though the grey dawn dispelling the impenetrable night to reveal Greater flamingoes and wading birds, already busy filtering or jabbing their breakfasts of choice before they leave in a flurry of wings and bamboo-long legs, to explore the menu upstream; at sunset when we feel that surely the colours have been manipulated by some celestial photo-shop tweaking to produce ridiculously perfect pictures.
But that’s what they are: pictures; impressions; representations. I’m not saying they’re fake; far from it. I simply line up the image and press the appropriate button; but they do not represent three-dimensional reality. If you were here yourself, your eyes and nose would soon enlighten you to the grimmer truth.
A few years ago there were reports that E-Coli had been found in the water, and certainly, it didn’t look as clean or clear as it used to. This past month a headline in the local paper read: ‘Blues at the lagoon’ and for good reason. Amidst furore over an alleged cover up of data and statistics from the City’s water-sampling department regarding pollution, local anger has stirred. People have flagged some, allegedly, questionable confidentiality agreements which allow only a very select few (pointedly excluding the media) any access to these results. Now unsanitary water seems to be back with a vengeance. According to the South African National 1996 Water Quality Guidelines ‘A limit of 100 [parts] E.coli/100ml of water is acceptable to swim in. A limit of 1,000 [parts] E.coli/100ml of water is tolerated for partial contact such as canoeing but not to to swim in.’ Alrighty then. But, the journalists over at ‘Tabletalk’ reported that they had managed to get their newsprinty hands on data for the lagoon water showing a whopping 11,500 parts/100ml in January & February, and 19,000/100ml in March. Good golly! Even for a maths-phobe like myself, it’s clear that this is over 100 times the limit considered safe…
In Europe of course, everything would have immediately been roped off and shut down; people in full body suits and masks would be wading around with test tubes and thingy-ometers measuring levels of grossness and general yuk. The council would be rushing around tracing the source of all the foulness and fixing drains, sewerage, leaks, etc etc before everyone started writing their strongly worded letters to ‘The Times’ and refusing to pay their Council Tax. Here, in Africa there was a minuscule ripple of activity the day the paper published their stomach-churning findings. Someone meandered down here and half-heartedly suspended a fluttering plastic tape between two lamp posts, with a flimsy laminated A4 DIY sign (which stayed in place less than 48 hours), announcing in three languages that the water is unsanitary and therefore not suitable for drinking, swimming or playing. You don’t say.
Anyone with a modicum of eyesight would probably have picked this up from the listless, stagnant, treacle-like, brown liquid swirling sluggishly, rather than flowing, down to the sea these past many months, not to mention the evil smell (which never translates to the idyllic photos of course). It certainly doesn’t seem to have deterred the general populace who, despite the cautionary signs, are still splashing around in there with and without dogs, small children, unsuspecting grandmothers etc. Let’s hope they’ve all had their inoculations and don’t sport any open wounds…
So all this serves as a very vivid, daily parable that things aren’t always what they seem. This is unlikely to be news to you, but for the more naive amongst us, by whom I am referring almost exclusively to myself, it is a timely reminder and cautionary tale. There are a multitude of things, activities and people who look harmless, even attractive but it turns out to be a thin disguise of something far less positive. Sometimes this doesn’t matter at all. The day I blithely poured chicken soup all over my children’s dessert in the sure but mistaken confidence that it was custard remains an amusing anecdote consigned to family folklore. The only semi-disaster was that it had to be assigned to the bin in its entirety and there was no pudding that day. We pulled through.
More significantly, politics has been offering us a selection of this kind of not-so-blue lagoon photographs in increasing quantities these past years. Or perhaps, since ancient wisdom tells us that, ‘there is nothing new under the sun’ (Ecclesiastes 1:9), my advancing age and/or experience is simply making me increasingly aware of it. Whether it’s the apparently never-ending saga of Brexit in Europe, the tales of dismay and mind-boggling incompetence from across the pond, or the insidious, power-grabbing, self-serving hypocrisy of African politics, the fact is that the poor always end up suffering while the middle-class are pulled at both ends and the rich seem to become richer and further removed from any of it. Meanwhile not a great deal of improvement can be seen in either hemisphere’s education, health or infrastructure systems. Too simplistic? Probably; but whatever’s going on, it definitely and all too frequently, stinks. Some days, the murky, toxic goo of sinister agendas, playground politics, personality cults, corporate pay-offs, dodgy deals and down-right greed threatens to slime and drown us all. Depressing, isn’t it?
Now, I don’t want to become either a recluse, or a cynic. I don’t want to join the, “I-can-shout-louder-than-you-can” agitators who claim they want us to all have a say yet can’t seem to hear anything beyond their own personal echo-chambers, and who appear to assume that a different opinion is virtually a hate crime should you dare to disagree with them. But I don’t want to be a passive armchair observer either. I want to be hope-carrier, a joy-bringer and a change-warrior, but for that I will have to swim upstream. The not-so-blue lagoon is a living reminder of the wisdom which remembers that things aren’t always what they seem, but which calls me to swim very much harder against the prevailing current. To do that consistently requires a strength and resolve far beyond my own abilities. For that, I undoubtedly need to spend more time looking up to heaven than down at the gunk.
‘Who hears the rippling of rivers will not utterly despair of anything.’ – Henry David Thoreau – 19th century US writer
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