'Apartheid Definitely Played Its Role in the Worsening of the Situation'

Flag of Cape Town, South Africa

South African Resident Says Politics and Corporate Greed Helped Create Flooding Crisis

A SPECIAL GUEST COMMENTARY

On July 15, From The G-Man was contacted by a South African laborer and citizen-journalist. The correspondent, who asked that his identity not be disclosed for fear of retribution from the South African government, wanted to respond to a news story about the flooding crisis that was posted on the site. The Aljazeera-linked news report can be viewed here: South Africa's Poor Hit Hardest by Floods

The following commentary was submitted by the former Cape Town resident to provide Americans, as well as those abroad, with information about the conditions and/or situations that are responsible for past and present flooding disasters. 

According to the correspondent, "I felt the need to comment on your recent article. I grew up in Cape Town and felt the need to comment on what appears to be an impossible situation." 

Flooding in the Western Cape

Many people live on the Cape Flats for one reason or another, which may not have anything to do with poverty or apartheid. The 'Cape Flats' are called that for good reason, as they are part of the extensive wetland chain that extends between the Cape Peninsula and the Boland mountain range -- literally 'highlands'.

Millions of years ago, the entire area was submerged and the peninsula was in fact an island of sorts. This wetland, as it is now, should never have been occupied by modern humans with houses and streets and the infrastructure that goes with it, but human nature being what it is, the occupation was inevitable.

Apartheid definitely played its role in the worsening of the situation by forcibly removing thousands of people from otherwise unaffected suburbs further away from the 'Flats', although this occupation would have occurred naturally sooner or later. As the Cape Flats is a wetland, the water table is very near the surface, and it only takes a few days of (otherwise) good rains to top it up, causing the flooding that has now become an annual event.

How do we fix it? This is a question that has plagued the city's engineers for many years now. The use of dykes is not really possible because the water tends to literally rise up out of the ground and not seep in from the sea. Let me state that this is not a professional opinion, merely an educated guess.

There is much history underlying this problem, but for me the solution, no matter how radical it may seem, lies in decentralization. One of the problems is that the 'political game' over the past few decades has encouraged the migration of 'voters' into the Western Cape from the Eastern Cape, where many of these people would have been living in a different kind of rural poverty due to the so-called 'betterment schemes' of the 1960's.

The culture of the people of the Eastern Cape -- mostly Xhosas -- has been systematically destroyed over the past few hundred years. This is nothing unique to South Africa because “first peoples” have always come off second best when it comes to clashing with the 'inevitable' progress of Western culture.

Thankfully, mankind has pushed itself to the brink of its own extinction and a global awakening is on the verge of occurring. Whether or not we will survive this is entirely up to how fast we come to consciousness and realize that the past 10,000 years was a dreadful mistake and we need to consider a better way of dealing with the problem…and fast!

I know this must sound like a mad flight of fancy, but there is some method behind the madness. We've all been looking at the problem from an anthropocentric point of view, and perhaps it's time to start looking at the bigger picture and realizing that our human dithering is getting us into really big trouble with our Mother, the Earth.