First things first. You need water to drink. You race off to the shops, only to find a long queue, patiently and some not so patiently waiting to buy bottled water . You may be among the lucky ones that get in first. I once saw people in a holiday town, fight at the Spar for a limited number of Bread Rolls that were becoming available. Imagine if the scarce resource were water!

Then you would think of a longer term plan.  Get a water tank.  Quickly!  So you could harvest any coming rain off your roof.  But think about this.  There are only about 140,000 water tanks made each year in South Africa.  And we have a population of about 50 million.  So there would be a mad scramble for water tanks until they were sold out.

Isn’t it just more sensible to buy a water tank, get it installed by Water Rhapsody with the necessary filters, so that in the unlikely event of your town running dry, for whatever reason… you and your family will have some degree of protection? Contact us to get a quote to install a water tank now and protect your most important assets, your family.

Posted by Water Rhapsody

Now that you are safely in our country you are no doubt happily realising you are not in a war zone. This may be in stark contrast to what you have been bracing yourself for should you have listened to Uli Hoeness or are an avid reader of English tabloids, which as we all know are only good for wrapping fish ‘n chips and advancing the careers of large-chested teens on page three.

As you emerge blinking from your luxury hotel room into our big blue winter skies, you will surely realise you are far more likely to be killed by kindness than by a stray bullet. Remember that most of the media reports you have read, which have informed your views on South Africa, will have been penned by your colleagues. And you know what journos are like, what with their earnest two thousand word opuses on the op-ed pages designed to fix this country’s ills in a heartbeat. Based on exhaustive research over a three-day visit.

Funnily enough, we are well aware of the challenges we face as a nation and you will find that 95% of the population is singing from the same song-sheet in order to ensure we can live up to our own exacting expectations.

We are also here to look after you and show you a good time. Prepare to have your preconceived notions well and truly shattered.

For instance, you will find precious few rhinos loitering on street corners, we don’t know a guy in Cairo named Dave just because we live in Johannesburg, and our stadiums are magnificent, world-class works of art.

Which is obviously news to the Sky TV sports anchor who this week remarked that Soccer City looked ‘ a bit of a mess’. She didn’t realize the gaps in the calabash exterior are to allow in natural light and for illumination at night, and not the result of vandalism or negligence.

The fact that England, the nation which safely delivered Wembley Stadium two years past its due date, is prepared to offer us South Africans advice on stadium-readiness should not be surprising. The steadiest stream of World Cup misinformation has emanated from our mates the Brits over the past couple of years.

If it’s not man-eating snakes lurking in Rooney’s closet at the team’s (allegedly half-built) Royal Bafokeng training base, then it’s machete-wielding gangs roaming the suburbs in search of tattooed, overweight Dagenham dole-queuers to ransack and leave gurgling on the pavement.

In fact what you are entering is the world’s most fascinating country, in my opinion. I’m pretty sure you will find that it functions far more smoothly, is heaps more friendly and offers plenty more diversions than you could possibly have imagined.

In addition to which, the population actually acts like human beings, and not like they are being controlled by sinister forces from above which turns them into bureaucratically-manipulated robots.

Plus we have world’s most beautiful women. The best weather. Eight channels of SuperSport. Food and wine from the gods themselves. Wildlife galore. (Love the Dutch team’s bus slogan: “Don’t fear the Big 5; fear the Orange 11”).

Having said all that, Jo’burg is undoubtedly one of the world’s most dangerous cities. Just ask those Taiwanese tourists who got out of their hire car to take close-up snaps of tawny beasts at the Lion Park a few years back. Actually, ask what’s left of them. And did you know the chances of being felled by cardiac arrest from devouring a mountain of meat at one of our world class restaurants has been statistically proven to be 33.3% higher in Jozi than in any other major urban centre not built upon a significant waterway? It’s true. I swear. I read it in a British tabloid.

Having recently spent two years comfortably cocooned in small town America, I’m only too aware of how little much of the outside world knows about this country. The American channel I used to work for has a massive battalion of employees descending on World Cup country. It has also apparently issued a recommendation to its staff to stay in their hotels when not working.

Given that said corporation is headquartered in a small town which many say is “best viewed through the rear-view mirror”, I find the recommendation, if it’s true, to be utterly astounding. In fact I don’t believe it is true. Contrary to the global stereotype, the best Americans are some of the sharpest people in the world. The fact they have bought most tickets in this World Cup proves the point.

Of course I have only lived in Johannesburg, city of terror and dread, virtually all my life, so don’t have the in-depth knowledge of say, an English broadsheet journalist who has been in the country for the weekend, but nevertheless I will share some of my observations gleaned over the years.

Any foreign tourist or media representative who is worried about his safety in South Africa should have a word with the Lions rugby fans from last year, or the Barmy Army cricket supporters (lilywhite hecklers by day, slurring, lager-fuelled lobsters by night). They managed just fine, just like the hundreds of thousands of fans who have streamed into the country over the past fifteen years for various World Cups, Super 14 matches, TriNations tests and other international events. Negligible crime incidents involving said fans over said period of time.

Trivia question: which country has hosted the most global sporting events over the past decade and a half? You don’t need me to answer that, do you?

In addition. Don’t fret when you see a gaggle of freelance salesmen converge on your car at the traffic lights (or robots as we like to call them) festooned with products. You are not about to be hijacked. Here in Mzansi (nickname for SA) we do a lot of our purchasing at robots. Here you can stock up on flags, coat hangers, batteries, roses for the wife you forgot to kiss goodbye this morning and a whole host of useful merchandise.

Similarly, that guy who runs up as you park the rental car outside the pub intends no malice. He’s your car guard. Give him a buck or two and your vehicle will be safe while you refuel for hours on our cheap, splendid beer. Unless someone breaks into it, of course.

We drive on the left in this country. Exercise caution when crossing the road at a jog-trot with 15 kilograms of camera gear on your back. Exercise common sense full stop. Nothing more. Nothing less. If you want to leave wads of cash in your hotel room like our Colombian friends, don’t be surprised if it grows wings.

Bottomline. Get out there and breathe in great lusty lungfuls of this amazing nation. Tuck into our world-class food and wines. Disprove the adage that white men can’t dance at our throbbing, vibrant night-clubs. Learn to say hello in all eleven official languages. Watch at least one game in a township. You will not be robbed and shot. You will be welcomed like a lost family member and looked after as if you are royalty. Ask those Bulls rugby fans who journeyed to Soweto recently.

With a dollop of the right attitude, this country will change your life.

It’s Africa’s time. Vacate your hotel room. Join the party.

Waka waka eh eh.

by Peter Davies – Supersport presenter

“We can say that residents and visitors to the city of Johannesburg needn’t fear about the quality of water supply to city,” the utility’s laboratory support manager Russel Rimmer said.

Speaking at a briefing on the R3.1-billion program of improvements and replacements within the city’s 10,000 kilometer water mains network, he said they conduct more than the legally required number of sample tests on supplies they receive from Rand Water, and were confident that the city’s supplies were safe.

“We do over 40 tests on the samples to be 100 percent sure of the water quality,” he said.

“Sometimes we are even scared to brush our teeth and we go out [in Europe] and buy a bottle of water. So, our water is safe.”

They had recently won the “Blue Drop” award from the department of water affairs which said the city had the cleanest water nationally and ranked among the world’s best.

“The regulation function was to some extent neglected,” water affairs acting chief director of regulations Helgard Muller told members of Parliament’s water affairs portfolio committee.

“Let me admit, I think that immediately after 1994, and for some years, this function was not getting the right attention… We had to prioritise due to limited resources,” he said.

Muller’s admission comes a fortnight after the release of his department’s Green Drop Report, which assessed 449 of the country’s 852 waste water treatment plants.

It found only 32 of them qualified for so-called Green Drop status, broadly equivalent to them complying with international standards.

Further, it found that “the bulk of the (sewage) plants can be described as poor to non-functional”, implying that hundreds of millions of litres of inadequately-treated sewage was being illegally discharged each day, mainly by small town municipalities.

R23bn – the amount Water Affairs Minister Buyelwa Sonjica says she needs to patch up the country’s collapsing sewage works – was enough.

Democratic Alliance MP Annette Lovemore said the Western Cape alone required R8bn to solve its waste water problems.

“The Western Cape is by far one of the better-performing provinces, so R23bn for the country – I wonder if this is not a serious under-estimation,” she said.

South Africa’s extensive network of sewage treatments plants, pipe networks and pump stations treats about 7.5bn litres of waste water a day.

It is estimated that 1.1 billion people globally rely on unsafe drinking water sources and that as much as 80 percent of waste water is being discharged untreated in developing countries.

A report found that if no action was taken, projected population and economic growth would lead to global water demand that was 40 percent in excess of current supply by the year 2030. – Sapa

The Water Affairs Department and the municipality have signed an agreement for the release of R20,000,000 to construct the plant in drought-stricken Plettenberg Bay.

A similar plant opened in Sedgefield near Knysna a few months ago.

The municipality’s Henry Geldenhuys said it has managed to cut water usage by 40 percent since the drought set in.

He said tenders for the plant have already been advertised.

“We hope to finalise the tenders by the middle of June and have the plant completed by the end of October.”

The proposals, details of which are contained in a document tabled at a meeting of Parliament’s water affairs portfolio committee on Tuesday, appear to fly in the face of an announcement made by Water Affairs Minister Buyelwa Sonjica last month.

“I want to allay the fears of South Africans that there is not in the near future a possibility of a [tariff] hike. It’s not in the pipeline,” she told a media briefing at Parliament on April 13.  Questioned about this later on Tuesday, the department’s media liaison director, Linda Page, said that there was no contradiction.

“You will remember that the minister was responding to a question on whether there are likely to be tariff increases linked to funding for infrastructure and thus potential increases in the price of raw water.  “The increases that the water boards are proposing… are the normal annual increases linked to the CPIX because they operate on a cost recovery basis,”

These range from 6,2% for Umgeni Water (from R3,24 a kilolitre to R3,47), to 43% in the case of Namakwa (from R6,37 to R9,11).

Among the water boards supplying the larger metropolitan areas, Rand Water is calling for a 14,1% increase (from R3,48 a kilolitre to R3,97) and Amatola for between an eight and 8,8 percent increase.  Bushbuckridge Water is proposing a 12,46% increase.

by Sapa.

Sonjica said yesterday the bill for refurbishing the plants could rise even higher, as the figure was an estimate. She said that while there was reason for concern at the parlous state of the country’s sewage treatment works, “we have not reached crisis levels”.

She briefed journalists at the Union Buildings at the release of the much-delayed Green Drop report, an assessment of how sewage treatment works are performing.  Poorly treated waste water pollutes land and rivers, posing problems for farmers, damage to eco- systems and health risks.  Water experts have expressed concern over deteriorating conditions at the plants, which treat just under 7 600 megalitres of waste water every day.

The report puts a capital replacement value of the country’s waste water treatment systems at R23bn – the amount Sonjica says she needs to deal with “hot spots”.

Her department’s acting chief director for water services and regulation, Leonardo Manus, said R12.6bn was needed for infrastructure, R1.4bn for operational expenditure – including hiring technicians, scientists and engineers – while R9.2bn was required for pump station networks and water reticulation infrastructure.  Sonjica said the R23bn was an estimate of the cost of dealing with problems only at the 50 percent of municipal treatment works assessed.

by Xolani Mbanjwa

The City has, since 2007, installed 41000 flow-restricting water meters – supplied by three different companies – outside residents’ homes.  They are programmed to dispense a pre-agreed amount of water a day. The amount can be set to only the free 6kl (200l a day) or higher.

Tenders worth over R50-million were awarded to the three companies and other firms responsible for installing them.  The meters form part of a broader 10-year water-saving and management strategy costing about R750-million.

The audit follows a letter by the SA Municipal Workers’ Union to former mayor Helen Zille, now premier of the Western Cape, in April 2009.  The union alleged that administrative malpractices may have been involved in the awarding of contracts.  Mashoko said the city ultimately wanted the devices installed in all households. “The main reasons for this are the dire need to reduce water losses and support the poor who cannot afford to pay for services.

“Because the initial focus is on the ‘pro-poor’ initiative of the city, all indigent households – with a property value of under R88000 – are being addressed, while, in a parallel process, all new households and developments, as well as meter replacements, (will see) these devices installed,” he said.

by Shanaaz Eggington

The George campus, known for its positive response to addressing energy and waste management on site, launched the Green Campus Initiative, of which the Sustainable Campus Project forms part, to compare three houses equipped with solar energy geysers and rainwater harvesting systems to a sample of identical houses utilising conventional systems.

“The Sustainable Campus Project is an exciting, living example of sustainable living that involves monitoring and comparing the daily energy and household water consumption of two groups of students living in houses on campus,” NMMU George campus marketing manager Alet van Tonder said.

The first step was to fit on-campus student homes with relevant green technologies, such as solar panels for heating water and simple mechanisms to ensure the sustainable use of that water. The research data will be used to raise awareness about “sustainable living”. The campus hopes the results of the six-month project will help to develop a practical model which could be applied to other campuses or institutions.

Neil Moll, owner of the company which donated the solar water heating systems, said: “We are … confident the research will prove beyond any shadow of a doubt that, indeed, it is possible to tread much lighter on Mother Earth.”

by Janine Oelofse