- Joined
- Dec 6, 2010
- Messages
- 33,422
- Reaction score
- 5,683
@PrinceOfPain I've just learned that South Africa's politicians would rather have their people die of thirst rather than accepting the Israeli's water conservation and reclamation expertise.
To be honest, I didn't even know you guys have beef with Israel, much less one that trumps a regional crisis of this magnitude.
“South Africa’s Israel-haters should be held to account for pressuring to limit sharing of Israel’s water-management technologies,” tweeted former Israeli ambassador to South Africa, Arthur Lenk, last week. He had done whatever he could to make Israel’s expertise in water management and drought relief available to South Africa for the four years he was based here.
His tweet was all the more poignant as Cape Town is likely to be the first large city ever to run out of water due to a severe, unprecedented drought in the Western Cape. Right now, desperate Capetonians face ‘Day Zero’ on April 12 - in less than three months’ time. The country has woken up to the fact that this is a reality that could have been averted if the right people had been brought in.
The right people are the Israelis – world experts in water conservation, making the Jewish state essentially ‘drought-proof’. M-Net’s Carte Blanche devoted an entire segment to this last week, interviewing Israeli experts and explaining clearly how 90% of Israel’s waste water is recycled and used in agriculture. It showed how its Sorek desalination plant turns seawater into drinking water in 45 minutes. It made the point about how the war in Syria could even have been a result of water scarcity, backing up former United Nations secretary-general Kofi Annan’s claim in 2001 that: “fierce competition for fresh water may well become a source of conflict and wars in the future”.
Back in the Cape, 1500 people have signed an online petition demanding that the government call on Israel for help: “The Western Cape is about to reach Day Zero, when the taps will run dry. The Israeli government approached the ruling ANC party to offer solutions years ago, but the ANC turned them down and adopted a pro-Palestinian stance. This petition demands that the ANC cease importing the politics of the Middle East and taking an anti-Israel unilateral stance. We demand that the South African government commence immediate talks with Israel to ask for help with solving our water crisis.”
But is it true that the ANC has formally turned down Israel’s help, and could Israel still save Cape Town at this late stage of the crisis? The truth is that every time the new Israeli ambassador, Lior Keinan, meets with anyone in government, he reminds them that Israel has the will and expertise to help and is here if needed, but no one has ever taken him up on the offer.
Israel’s assistance has never been taken off the table, and – if formally requested – Israel would not hesitate to send out the experts to help. However, at this point, expecting any country or expert to make miracles and turn the problem around before Day Zero is hardly realistic, no matter how desperate the situation. Keinan himself was unable to comment.
As explained by David W Olivier in an article titled ‘Cape Town’s water crisis: driven by politics more than drought’, “The Western Cape is the only province in the country run by the official opposition party, the Democratic Alliance ... this means that the relationship between national government and the Western Cape is complicated, as the water crisis shows.
“Two tiers of governance – the Western Cape province and the City of Cape Town – went above and beyond what was required to prepare for drought. The system failed, however, at the level of national government.
“Wasteful expenditure in the national department of water and sanitation, erroneous water allocations to agriculture and a failure to acknowledge or respond to provincial and municipal help obstructed timely interventions.
“National government’s numerous spanners jammed up the works of a system that could have managed the crisis quite effectively,” concludes Olivier.
Furthermore, the BDS movement has constantly put more spanners in the works. In February 2016, a Johannesburg conference organised by the Mail & Guardian newspaper dealing with the water crisis was cancelled because of opposition regarding the inclusion of Ambassador Lenk, who was to be part of a panel on ‘equitable and sustainable water management for poverty alleviation’.
BDS South Africa welcomed the cancellation, saying: “The rug has been pulled from the Israeli ambassador, who will not be able to exploit our very serious water crises for his own cheap publicity and whitewashing of his regime. Israeli water technology is not unique or special; such technology is widely available through other more friendly countries.”
Yet in August, Shauna Westcott wrote in on the Daily Maverick: “The world leaders in water technologies are the Israelis ... nearly 70 years of research, experiment and the steady implementation of multifaceted systems has achieved the seemingly impossible: arid Israel, 60% desert, now not only has water security but also supplies water to both Jordan and the Palestinian Authority.”
So, can Israel swoop in and save us? “There is nothing Israel can do to save Cape Town right now ... it takes two to three years to build a desalination plant and there is no quicker solution than that. The only thing Capetonians can do is to reduce consumption and save water, in order to get us to winter,” says DA councillor Errol Anstey.
Yet he agrees that Israel could help the rest of South Africa, which he says will have to build desalination plants across the country. “Israel has never offered South Africa a free desalination plant, but its companies have been invited to tender and its assistance has never been formally turned down,” says Anstey. He agrees that politics are at play, and “there is no doubt that corruption has led to the collapse of infrastructure”.
Indeed, with Cape Town teetering on the edge, the time to put aside politics would be now.
http://www.sajr.co.za/news-and-articles/2018/01/25/day-zero-can-israel-save-cape-town
To be honest, I didn't even know you guys have beef with Israel, much less one that trumps a regional crisis of this magnitude.
Day Zero: Can Israel save Cape Town?
by TALI FEINBERG | Jan 25, 2018
by TALI FEINBERG | Jan 25, 2018
“South Africa’s Israel-haters should be held to account for pressuring to limit sharing of Israel’s water-management technologies,” tweeted former Israeli ambassador to South Africa, Arthur Lenk, last week. He had done whatever he could to make Israel’s expertise in water management and drought relief available to South Africa for the four years he was based here.
His tweet was all the more poignant as Cape Town is likely to be the first large city ever to run out of water due to a severe, unprecedented drought in the Western Cape. Right now, desperate Capetonians face ‘Day Zero’ on April 12 - in less than three months’ time. The country has woken up to the fact that this is a reality that could have been averted if the right people had been brought in.
The right people are the Israelis – world experts in water conservation, making the Jewish state essentially ‘drought-proof’. M-Net’s Carte Blanche devoted an entire segment to this last week, interviewing Israeli experts and explaining clearly how 90% of Israel’s waste water is recycled and used in agriculture. It showed how its Sorek desalination plant turns seawater into drinking water in 45 minutes. It made the point about how the war in Syria could even have been a result of water scarcity, backing up former United Nations secretary-general Kofi Annan’s claim in 2001 that: “fierce competition for fresh water may well become a source of conflict and wars in the future”.
Back in the Cape, 1500 people have signed an online petition demanding that the government call on Israel for help: “The Western Cape is about to reach Day Zero, when the taps will run dry. The Israeli government approached the ruling ANC party to offer solutions years ago, but the ANC turned them down and adopted a pro-Palestinian stance. This petition demands that the ANC cease importing the politics of the Middle East and taking an anti-Israel unilateral stance. We demand that the South African government commence immediate talks with Israel to ask for help with solving our water crisis.”
But is it true that the ANC has formally turned down Israel’s help, and could Israel still save Cape Town at this late stage of the crisis? The truth is that every time the new Israeli ambassador, Lior Keinan, meets with anyone in government, he reminds them that Israel has the will and expertise to help and is here if needed, but no one has ever taken him up on the offer.
Israel’s assistance has never been taken off the table, and – if formally requested – Israel would not hesitate to send out the experts to help. However, at this point, expecting any country or expert to make miracles and turn the problem around before Day Zero is hardly realistic, no matter how desperate the situation. Keinan himself was unable to comment.
As explained by David W Olivier in an article titled ‘Cape Town’s water crisis: driven by politics more than drought’, “The Western Cape is the only province in the country run by the official opposition party, the Democratic Alliance ... this means that the relationship between national government and the Western Cape is complicated, as the water crisis shows.
“Two tiers of governance – the Western Cape province and the City of Cape Town – went above and beyond what was required to prepare for drought. The system failed, however, at the level of national government.
“Wasteful expenditure in the national department of water and sanitation, erroneous water allocations to agriculture and a failure to acknowledge or respond to provincial and municipal help obstructed timely interventions.
“National government’s numerous spanners jammed up the works of a system that could have managed the crisis quite effectively,” concludes Olivier.
Furthermore, the BDS movement has constantly put more spanners in the works. In February 2016, a Johannesburg conference organised by the Mail & Guardian newspaper dealing with the water crisis was cancelled because of opposition regarding the inclusion of Ambassador Lenk, who was to be part of a panel on ‘equitable and sustainable water management for poverty alleviation’.
BDS South Africa welcomed the cancellation, saying: “The rug has been pulled from the Israeli ambassador, who will not be able to exploit our very serious water crises for his own cheap publicity and whitewashing of his regime. Israeli water technology is not unique or special; such technology is widely available through other more friendly countries.”
Yet in August, Shauna Westcott wrote in on the Daily Maverick: “The world leaders in water technologies are the Israelis ... nearly 70 years of research, experiment and the steady implementation of multifaceted systems has achieved the seemingly impossible: arid Israel, 60% desert, now not only has water security but also supplies water to both Jordan and the Palestinian Authority.”
So, can Israel swoop in and save us? “There is nothing Israel can do to save Cape Town right now ... it takes two to three years to build a desalination plant and there is no quicker solution than that. The only thing Capetonians can do is to reduce consumption and save water, in order to get us to winter,” says DA councillor Errol Anstey.
Yet he agrees that Israel could help the rest of South Africa, which he says will have to build desalination plants across the country. “Israel has never offered South Africa a free desalination plant, but its companies have been invited to tender and its assistance has never been formally turned down,” says Anstey. He agrees that politics are at play, and “there is no doubt that corruption has led to the collapse of infrastructure”.
Indeed, with Cape Town teetering on the edge, the time to put aside politics would be now.
http://www.sajr.co.za/news-and-articles/2018/01/25/day-zero-can-israel-save-cape-town
Last edited:
