Time to clean up our act

This time of year when we are anxiously watching the skies our awareness of water scarcity increases. Nothing has improved. On the contrary the city water situation is worse and to quote local civic society trust Kubatana  “we’re gonna say it again, and in capital letters – UNDERGROUND WATER IN HARARE, AND EVERYWHERE, IS A FINITE RESOURCE”. Last month Kubatana published a paper on their website. www.kubatana.net by hydrogeologist T. J Broderick which makes for scary reading in how Harare is destroying its own water supply.
As he says “Excessive groundwater abstraction occurs when more water is drawn out than can be replaced by natural recharge. …and the result is a progressive depletion of the water table. This undesirable state of affairs can only be rectified by collective appreciation of the problem and conscious management and control of groundwater abstra-ction…it is up to the Sub-Catchment Councils to earn their keep, provided for in the payment of quarterly ‘monitoring fees’ on registered boreholes, by enforcing the sound management principles provided for by the water law, regulations and standards that exist.
But there is no sign of water management. To the contrary, it seems common knowledge that by paying the right person in the Catchment Council most laws and monitoring are ignored. I have it on good authority that the water miner in my neighbourhood, in the middle of a residential area, pumps out and sells in excess of 300 000 litres per day!  In the meantime domestic boreholes in the street have run dry and with no supply from the city, it’s a direct contravention of the water authority’s mandate to distribute water equitably.
Our city council is raping our city – with uncontrolled development on green spaces and uncontrolled water abstraction; destroying the very spaces that generate our water and exacerbating the problem by over extraction of underground water.
Unlike Harare, the City of Johannesburg has a thirty year strategic plan. Its hard to imagine a city actually engaging its residents in discussion about the future rather than treating them as a nuisance and only as a source of revenue. Joburg’s strategic plan includes green spaces, adequate and clean water, sustainable human settlements, good governance and poverty eradication.  Wow!  We will be lucky to have a functioning city in thirty years time. I imagine derelict concrete palaces and dying trees with ground water gone.
So it is heartening to hear of generative activities. One such is ZeeBAGs run out of Harare hospital where currently a group of 11 mentally stressed women come together in a creative income generating scheme making beautiful bags out of plastic salvaged from the city dump. Each bag takes about two days to make and uses up 30 to 40 plastic packets. The plastic is collected, washed, cut into strips, rolled into balls and crocheted into sturdy bags for laptops, school and shopping.
Zeebags raises awareness about mental illness at the same time as helping clean up the environment. In one woman’s words “When we started making ZeeBAGs, we were thinking too hard about our problems. Now I am thinking about my next bag, I plan it and I think of how it will be sold.”
Look out for ZeeBAGs at various fairs and markets around the City. Next up is the Charity Christmas Bazaar at the Egyptian Residence in Kent Road on Saturday 8th December. The website www.friendshipbench.com with more information will be up by the end of the year.
Time to take more care – of each other and our environment. Time to think about how to manage our water and our future.
– g.jeke@yahoo.com