S.Africa faces cholera epidemic - scientist warns

South Africa's top water-research expert Dr Anthony Turton was fired last week by the South African council for scientific and industrial research -- for telling the truth about the country's dangerously filthy rivers, streams and lakes.

A major cholera epidemic looms ever larger, warned Turton, citing from a large body of extensive scientific and medical research undertaken by SA scientists at CSIR - warns of 'extensive, dangerous faecal and chemical pollution of South Africa's water resources, above- and belowground.' The country's top water-research scientist has also been banned from reading his research paper 'A Clean South Africa' , was ordered to turn over his computer and ordered to vacate his office. The shock move was announced by CSIR chairman Sibusiso Sibisi, who told the local news media in a formal statement that 'Turton had placed the department in a bad light' with his research paper. Read Dr Turton's report here: http://blat.co.za/KeynoteAddressCSIR2008.pdf SA society close to socio-economic collapse: South African society, Turton warned, now is coming very close to socio-economic collapse and chaotic violence -- because its booming population will have to start fighting over the country's rapidly-shrinking clean-water resources. He warned that the recent xenophobic outbursts in the South African townships, when hundeds of foreign Africans were murdered, often torched inside their shacks and chased from black townships by South Africans, were only a taste of the chaos which he expects to erupt over the dangerously polluted levels of the country's scarce fresh-water resources. The scientist warned that South Africa gets so little rainfall -- only about 450mm a year on average -- that the very high level of faecal and chemical pollution of all its fresh-water resources can no longer dilute it nor wash it away. Even the ancient acquifers deep underground now are becoming polluted because the dilution factor is no longer present in South Africa, he warns. The reason Turton fears the collapse of South African society, and widespread civil strife over the clean-water issue, is because much of the faecal pollution in the streams, rivers and acquifers is indeed caused by millions of residents in the mushrooming squatter camps -- which have no sanitary facilities. Most of these squatters are foreign Africans -- some 5-million migrants have arrived in South Africa from the rest of the continent since 1994, setting up at least 6,000 new squatter camps along all its fresh-water resources. Its residents dump all their human- and chemical waste into this scarce water-supply -- besides swimming in it and drinking from it - and even have their livestock wade in it. The pollution of SA's fresh water supplies is however also caused by the fact that more than 60 percent of the country's best-qualified municipal engineers have emigrated since 1994.The municipal purification plants now are so badly managed, often staffed by unskilled employees, that many of these overtaxed sewerage plants -- very few new ones have been built since the apartheid-years in spite of the population growth -- have collapsed and their pumps stopped working. The raw sewerage is overflowing straight into the fresh-water streams and dams in many South African towns and cities now. This was recently admitted by the country's minister of water affairs and forestry, Lindiwe Hendricks, who noted that the vast majority of the country's sewerage plants 'no longer functioned as they should'. "This was mainly due to the massive brain-drain of municipal engineers from South Africa," she said at a seminar two months ago - adding angrily that the 'pollution of the country's rivers was unacceptable.' At the same time however -- ruling party officials still deny that a water crisis exists. Instead they were going to solve the problem by 'slamming down hard on municipalities which were polluting our water-resources,' Minister Hendricks said. The country's few remaining commercial farmers meanwhile are also issuing health warnings due to the water pollution: the Transvaal Agricultural Union and the SA Agricultural Union recently held several crisis meetings about the dangerous water-pollution in the Vaal and Orange rivers. They warned that the safety of the country's agricultural products is being threatened by the high levels of chemical-faecal pollution. South Africa is mostly semi-arid and only 6 percent of its entire surface has ever been suitable for farming throughout its recorded agricultural history since 1656 - most of the country simply is too bone-dry to farm. In 1994 there were 85,000 commercial farmers, but tens of thousands of farms have since then been vacated and now are no longer used for commercial food-production. Endangered crops The few commercial kitchen-garden farmers along the irrigated 300-km stretch of farms south of the low-volume Orange River south of Namibia, are also warning that their export grape-crops are being endangered by the increasing pollution levels. Most of their grapes are exported to the European Union, which maintains very strict quality controls. They fear losing their export contracts. But the farmers are drawing up their own plans to save the nation's food supplies: under SA law, farmers and indeed all taxpayers are entitled to withhold their rates and taxes from the central government if they don't get proper services in return -- so the farmers of the Transvaal Agricultural Union plan declaring a formal dispute over the issue soon. They want to use their withheld water-taxes for purification of their purchased river water before irrigating their crops with it in future. Besides the socio-economic impact which South Africa's polluted water is having on its agricultural production, the faecal pollution is also causing major health problems countrywide. Durban ratepayers have even set up a website where they place photographic records of the latest health hazards facing the city residents and its hundreds-of-thousands of annual foreign tourists. This Indian ocean harbour recently also lost it's 'blue water certificate' because its once so pristine beaches have simply become too filthy for swimming and surfing. And south of Durban in the harbour cities of Port Elizabeth and East London, more than 160 newborns died the Ukhahlamba district of the Eastern Cape earlier this year after consumption of disease-contaminated municipal tap water. Parasites in the municipal drinking water: Dirty-water alarms were also raised last month in the resort town of Sunrise-on-Sea near East London. Ratepayers there discovered thousands of “mysterious parasites” swimming around in their drinking water -- and people were falling ill with a range of stomach ailments. Residents said the problem had by then already been around for nearly seven weeks. They blamed the poor qualifications of the workers at the local municipal sewerage plant. One resident, Marlene van Brakel warned that the workers carrying out these tests were not qualified water-engineers - and that they only knew how to test for micro-organisms. They did not test for parasites. Some residents have stopped using the municipal water - making arrangements with a local farmer for their drinking-water supplies instead. Buffalo City Municipality spokesman Samkelo Ngwenya denies all this, claiming that they had 'found no harmful bacteria'. However, similar dirty-water complaints are reported from muncipalities countrywide - with people and animals dying from water pollution. Crocodiles dying of water pollution in Kruger National Park: Earlier this year, rangers at the Kruger National Park along the SA - Mozambiquan borders, warned that their crocodiles were all dying of a mysterious disease. This was a major wakeup call for the country's environmentalists: crocodiles have the oldest and most efficient immune system on the planet and can survive even in heavily-polluted mudpools, yet when they ate the fishes in the Crocodile river, they died. Kruger scientist Danie Pienaar was 'closely monitoring the crocodile-dieoffs,' he said. "We are in unknown territory and we certainly don't have the answers as to why these crocodiles are dying,' he said. "The Olifants River is the most polluted of all the rivers in the Kruger and the system now has further strain from the polluted Massingir Dam." Cholera in Mussina: Also, this week in nearby Mussina, the border crossing town with Zimbabwe, a full scale cholera outbreak now is steadily infecting local residents and local hospitals are overrun with cholera-infected Zimbabweans. Limpopo Health Department spokesman Phuti Seloba confirmed on November 2008 that 81 people were by that stage already being treated at Mussina Hospital with three deaths recorded. The patients all were from Zimbabwe. Crocodiles are increasingly important to modern medical science: Five years ago U.S. scientists isolated "crocodillin," a peptide in crocodile blood that has powerful antibacterial properties. Peptides, molecules formed from the linking of various amino acids, can be effective as antibiotics by penetrating and hence, destroying, the cell membranes of bacteria. So if crocodiles start dying from pollution, humans must start worrying, these scientists say. South African crocodile farmers also manufacturer oils and ointments from the fat of crocodiles which prove to be very effective in curing a large variety of skin ailments.