Posted on 06/22/2023 9:34:32 PM PDT by george76
The peace of a normally tranquil suburban road near South Africa's capital, Pretoria, is being shattered by the sound of drilling.
These are not prospectors looking for a new source of the country's mineral wealth, but workers digging for an arguably more precious resource: water.
Private boreholes - like this one being excavated in Garsfontein - are springing up across the wealthier neighbourhoods in the country's economic heartland, where taps have been running dry.
"I am tired of not knowing when we will have water and when we won't," the frustrated homeowner says.
Having a borehole means we won't have to depend on the government so much, it's what's best for my family."
Much of the domestic water supply here depends on electricity to pump it from the source to the vast high plain on which the cities of Johannesburg and Pretoria sit.
South Africa's recent electricity woes - with regular lengthy scheduled blackouts - have had a knock-on effect on the supply of water.
"All of our stations, they need electricity, they need power.
...
Some days I don't have both water and electricity, and this can be for days at a time. It makes daily life insufferable,
...
The lack of electricity has exacerbated issues created by poorly maintained infrastructure, which has led to vast leaks as well as sewage problems, and a supply of water that cannot meet demand.
Seventy million litres of treated, clean, drinkable water are lost every single day because of leaks that are endemic in the crumbling water system.
...
because of corruption and theft.
(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.com ...
No water, but black Africans prefer no food and water if that food and water were provided for by whites.
They don’t want 50 year old white males designing their water systems any more than OceanGate wanted them designing their water-keeping-out systems.
Apartheid had to go. But they did not handle transition to majority rule very well.
African culture is thoroughly Big Chieftain culture. There was little hope it would go beyond that.
How’s ridding your country of all the white folks working out for you, SA?
Hey South Africa, how’s all that diversity and equity working for you?
How long will SA’s collapse take?
Much of S. Africa remains tribal in their thinking and highly superstitious.
Some citizens in Capetown are demanding independence. Now might be a good time to do it because the government of South Africa is so corrupt that they wouldn't be able to do anything about it.
Savages.
They want Zimbabwe and South Africa here, except the blacks get to run things as a minority.
Having been there (2019) for 3 weeks...I’ll make three observations:
1. Tons of potential around the whole country, but massively divided among tribes, political units and social causes. Almost everyone will agree on major corruption prior to Apartheid, but corruption just doubled up after Apartheid.
2. If the country were divided...the Cape Town region (extending 200 miles up the coast, and 100 miles to the east) would do fairly well, compared to the rest of the nation.
3. All this water shortage business goes back to decisions in the 1990s (as major cities were expanding) that doing ‘nothing’ was the chief strategy of the national government. They refused to accept the idea of massive movement into the five big cities of the nation, and that their consumption would require major planning.
Oddly, when the topic of Trump came up...I had a number of SA’s (black and white)...curiously interested in him, and most feeling that that was the type of leader they needed there.
Miss the hockey’s running things much?
“Savages.”
Eh....I wouldn’t be so quick to condemn. The “savages” in DC would have us all (especially the old, whitey, rightey ones of us) going without water and electricity (and food).... if they could manage it. And if we don’t stop them soon....
they ‘will’ manage it.
Here’s something no one knows. White South African now come here on temp visas to work for a few months out of the year in Ag industries. They make them go back (which most do); they come back every year for as long as they are allowed to be here.
I wouldn’t say that much. Everyone has 1970s/1980s corruption stories to tell, and after the old gov’t left...corruption was more or less out in the open. The one factor I notice is that skepticism is ultra-high, and it didn’t matter if you were talking to blacks or whites.
The one factor which isn’t openly talked about...tons of drug trafficking around Cape Town. Lot of cocaine/crack...opioids in 2019 had just begun to arrive there.
Obamanites:a group of people who have merged the ideologies of Marxism and islam for day-to-day life.
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