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Billions of litres of raw sewage in rivers and dams a national security issue

02 March 2022 | Story Prof Anthony Turton | Photo Supplied

Prof Turton — Prof Anthony Turton, Affiliated Professor in the Centre for Environmental Management at the University of the Free State (UFS), writes that in the face of the typhoid outbreak, we need to renew our trust in science, but also wake up and smell the coffee.

Opinion article by Prof Anthony Turton from the Centre for Environmental Management, University of the Free State .

The recent news has been dominated by so many things that an important signal has been drowned out by the noise. That small signal is the announcement by the NICD that typhoid has been identified in parts of the country, so the prudent approach is to boil the water coming from taps. While this is an important development, it needs to be placed into context. For starters, the NICD is a credible institution, so anything they say must be taken seriously. This issue brings three important factors into clear focus. Let us unpack each of these in order to gain greater perspective.

The issue of trust

The first is the issue of trust. This is a global phenomenon, most notably associated with social media that has enabled each person to theoretically have access to the entire quantum of our cumulative knowledge as an apex species on planet earth. In an instant, each person has the capacity to become an expert on a given topic. We have seen this playing out in the COVID-19 space, most notably as the efficacy of the vaccination programme has been questioned. While it is great that so much information is available to everyone instantly, it is also a problem, because unless the individual is trained to filter out the noise, they are rapidly overloaded with stuff that causes them to panic. In South Africa this has an added dimension, driven by the findings of the Zondo Commission, which in general indicate a severe trust deficit between government and the general population. Seen in this light, it is highly likely that the typhoid issue will fall directly into that chasm of trust and serve to widen it even further. This needs to be dealt with in our collective best interest, because panic serves nobody in a constructive way. Therefore, the first part of my core message is that we must avoid the urge to become instant experts by deferring the scientific facts to the scientific professionals. Sadly, science has been a victim of this trust deficit, so my voice might be lost in the howling gale of discontentment.

The problem of deteriorating water quality

The second is the problem of deteriorating water quality. In this regard, we are on absolutely solid ground, because we know – without fear of contradiction – that our water quality has been on a downward trajectory for some time. If we are looking for a pivotal moment, we might consider the acid mine drainage decant that first hit the public attention in 2002. Amid a flurry of activism and a media frenzy, we have the sad reality, two decades later, that absolutely nothing has been done about this matter. Highly acidic mine water, rich in a dissolved cocktail of metals that include uranium, arsenic, cadmium, and mercury, have continued to flow into our rivers and dams in mining areas of the country. But more importantly, we have also witnessed the systematic collapse of our wastewater infrastructure, which has accelerated over the past decade; this is best epitomised by the unsuccessful attempt of the SANDF to prevent the flow of raw sewage into the Vaal River at Emfuleni. Two billion rand later, we are no closer today to finding a solution than we were a decade ago. The numbers are staggering. As a nation, we produce over five billion litres of raw sewage every day. The latest credible calculation of that flow indicated that about 4,2 billion litres were being discharged daily into our rivers in an untreated format. That represents a tsunami of human waste inundating our rivers and dams, without respite, for more than a decade.

This is probably our biggest single challenge as a nation. In my professional opinion, this is a national security issue, because it impacts negatively on the lives of each citizen daily. It is destroying the economy from within by damaging the health of the individual, without them even knowing about it. You see, in sewage return flows, we find every substance that is ever dispensed in the retail sector. Think of the pharmaceutical industry. Imagine how much medication is sold each day by major pharmacies countrywide. Every item sold ends up in the sewage stream in a partially metabolised format. These include antibiotics, antiretrovirals, antidepressants, oestrogen used for contraception, and Viagra used to keep an aging population happy. So, we need to think of the sewage streams being discharged into our rivers and dams as thousands of tons of medication, still viable even in its partially metabolised form, to which we are exposing trillions of pathogenic microbes that are flourishing in the warm nutrient-rich waters. Think of this as a boot camp for microbes, because lazy and weak ones are destroyed by the low concentration of antibiotics, leaving only the stronger ones to flourish. In short, our boot camp for microbes is producing the next generation of multidrug-resistant pathogens. It is happening right before our eyes. Simply think about this logically and draw your own conclusion if you choose to mistrust science for reasons of your own. Does it make sense to allow the discharge of more than four billion litres of sewage daily into our rivers and dams, without anticipating some form of unintended consequence?

Our ability to cope as a nation

The third is the issue of our ability to cope as a nation. Here is where it gets really interesting, because at the very time when we are facing multiple risks to our economic well-being – COVID-19, unemployment, capital flight, energy crisis, corruption, to name but a few – we also need to be at our peak performance when it comes to finding solutions. We can say, with a high level of confidence, that our capacity to reach consensus on the way to solve the complex problems we are facing, is probably at an historic low (and deteriorating). In fact, we can say that there is an inverse relationship between our need to find consensus on a viable way ahead, and our capacity to generate the very consensus on which our survival as a species depends. This sounds a little dramatic, but I am using it to illustrate the point that globally, our capacity to unite in the face of a single common threat – climate change – is being eroded by many forces. These include the deficit of trust in government (point one noted above), the growing mistrust of science (exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic and the manifest as social pushback from the anti-vaxxers and the climate change denialists), and the increased sense of helplessness that each person is confronted with.

All of these are manifested in the typhoid issue. While typhoid is clearly a bad thing, we need to place it in context. Just as the COVID issue has shown us, the fatalities are relatively few, and while tragic to the individual families impacted, seen through the lens of logic and reason, this is not a show-stopper. What it does is highlight the issue of our failing sewage infrastructure. We can no longer simply accept that incompetent politicians can muddle their way through a growing crisis. We have to hold them accountable. We must convert the rising sense of rage into the high-octane rocket fuel of change. We need to say enough is enough. Now is the time that we demand technically competent people be appointed into specialist jobs, and then held fully accountable. We need to depoliticise the deployment of cadres, for that policy has brought us the failing infrastructure we see in Eskom, PRASA, municipal wastewater systems, and many other failed SOEs.

In the face of the typhoid outbreak, we need to renew our trust in science, but also wake up and smell the coffee by realising that we cannot simply discharge billions of litres of acidic mine water and raw sewage into our rivers and dams, without encountering unintended consequences. Those consequences might just be deadly.

News Archive

UFS law experts publish unique translation

2006-06-21

Attending the launch of the publication were from the left: Prof Boelie Wessels (senior lecturer at the UFS Faculty of Law), Prof Frederick Fourie (Rector and Vice-Chancellor of the UFS), Prof Johan Henning (Dean: UFS Faculty of Law) and Adv Jaco de Bruin (senior lecturer at the UFS Faculty of Law). Prof Wessels translated the treatise from corrupted medieval lawyer Latin into English, Prof Henning is the leading author and initiator of the publication and Adv de Bruin assisted with the proofreading and editing. Photo: Stephen Collett

UFS law experts publish unique translation of neglected source of partnership law

The Centre for Business Law at the University of the Free State (UFS) has translated a unique long neglected Roman-Dutch source of the law of partnership law from Latin into English. This source dates back to 1666.

The book, called Tractatus de Societate (A Treatise on the Law of Partnership), by Felicius and Boxelius is published as Volume 40 in the research series Mededelings van die Sentrum vir Ondernemingsreg/Transactions of the Centre for Business Law. It is the first translation of this Roman-Dutch source into English and comprises of a comprehensive discussion of the South African common law of partnerships.

“Apart from various brief provisions dealing on a peace meal and an ad hoc basis with diverse matters such as insolvency, there is no comprehensive Partnership Act in South Africa. The law of partnership in South Africa consists of South African common-law, which is mainly derived from Roman-Dutch law,” said Prof Johan Henning, Dean of the Faculty of Law at the UFS. Prof Henning is also the leading author and initiator of this comprehensive publication.

“Countries such as America, England, Ireland and The Netherlands have drafted or are in the process of establishing new modern partnership laws in line with new international guidelines, practices and commercial usages,” said Prof Henning.

“However, in South Africa the most recent policy document released by the Department of Trade and Industry explicitly excludes partnership law from its present company law reform programme and clearly regards this as an issue for another day,” said Prof Henning.

“Unless there is a political will to allocate the necessary resources to a comprehensive partnership law revision program, it is a practical reality that South Africa will not have a modern Partnership Act in the foreseeable future,” said Prof Henning.

According to Prof Henning South African courts have been using the Roman-Dutch partnership law sources as authority. “The English Partnership Act of 1890 is not binding and the English text books should therefore be approached with caution,” said Prof Henning.

“A treatise on the law of partnership that has been regarded by South African courts as an important common law authority is that of a Frenchman by the name of Pothier. This treatise was translated into English and was regarded as an authority of significance in The Netherlands towards the end of the eighteenth century,” said Prof Henning.

“Pothier’s opinions are however not valid throughout in the Roman-Dutch partnership law as it did not apply to the Dutch province of The Netherlands and it sometimes also rely on local French customs for authority,” said Prof Henning.

For this reason the Centre for Business Law at the UFS decided to focus its attention again on the significance of the comprehensive treatise of Felicius and Boxelius on the Roman-Dutch partnership law. Felicius was an Italian lawyer and Boxelius a Dutch lawyer.

This long neglected source of partnership law was published in 1666 in Gorkum in The Netherlands. "A significant amount of Roman-Dutch sources of authoritive writers trusted this treatise and referred to it,” said Prof Henning.

The translation of the treatise from corrupted medieval lawyer Latin into English was done by Prof Boelie Wessels, a very well-known expert on Roman Law and senior lecturer at the UFS Faculty of Law. Prof Wessels, who has 15 degrees, spent almost ten years translating the treatise. The proofreading and editing of the translation was done by Prof Henning and Adv Jaco de Bruin, a senior lecturer at the UFS Faculty of Law.

“We want the South African courts to use Volume 40 in the research series Mededelings van die Sentrum vir Ondernemingsreg/Transactions of the Centre for Business Law as the primary source of reference when cases where Roman-Dutch Law partnership law principles are involved, are ruled on,” said Prof Henning.

The first part of the publication comprises of selected perspectives on the historical significance of the work as well as a translation of selected passages. “The intention is to follow this up expeditiously with the publication of a very limited edition of a complete translation of the work,” said Prof Henning.

A total of 400 copies of the publication will be distributed to all courts, the Appeal Court and the Supreme Court.

Media release
Issued by: Lacea Loader
Media Representative
Tel: (051) 401-2584
Cell: 083 645 2454
E-mail: loaderl.stg@mail.uovs.ac.za
21 June 2006

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