Durban, the seaside city where politicians wallow in pollution

“Americans don’t care too much for beauty. They’ll shit in a river, dump battery acid in a stream. They’ll watch dead rats wash up on the beach. And complain if they can’t swim.”

Swap “Americans” for “eThekwini municipality” and Lou Reed’s bitter song Last Great American Whale could be a lament for Durban in the summer of 2022.

ActionSA claimed in October that about 28-million litres of raw sewage was flowing onto Durban’s beaches every day. 

Now the holidays are here, but the lofty promises of infrastructure repairs, made by Durban politicians confronted with the awful spectacle of R25m — almost a rand for every litre of sewage — in lost tourist spending evaporating from their badly run city every single day, are little more than polished turds.

Seven months after the floodwaters receded, the disaster is still being blamed for the province’s dysfunctional sewerage infrastructure.

Yet sewage from badly maintained plants has been pouring into Durban’s ocean for years, as evidenced by the city’s previous spats with the international Blue Flag beach quality system.

eThekwini now sounds a lot like Emfuleni, the vast municipality at the heart of the Vaal Triangle whose name is regularly accompanied by  the words “failed” or “embattled” in press reports.

It’s not so much the Emfuleni municipality that is embattled as its people as they continue to live, often literally, with sewage lapping at their feet.

Unlike Durban, however, there is no end in sight for Emfuleni’s sewage troubles because it has no fancy beachfront hotels whose rooms may be empty this summer.

eThekwini officials might heed the advice some wag spray-painted on a warning sign in a huge Joburg pothole just days before the Soccer World Cup kicked off in June 2010: “Fix it — they are here”.