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VAAL – Civil rights group AfriForum says the deadly water-borne cholera bacteria has been detected in the Vaal River.
AfriForum and the Save Ngwathe organisation said water samples from the Vaal River at Parys on Tuesday tested positive for cholera.
“An accredited laboratory took water samples at different locations in this town under the supervision of a water specialist,” said AfriForum’s Environmental Affairs Manager Lambert de Klerk.
“The first water sample taken at the outlet of the sewage works was not contaminated with cholera. The second water sample taken from a residential house in Parys tested negative for cholera but was infected with E. coli,” explained de Klerk.
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A third water sample was taken in the Vaal River, about 10 metres downstream from a manhole pouring sewage into the river for some time.
“It is this very water sample that is contaminated with cholera and E. coli. AfriForum is still waiting for the official results, but the laboratory has already notified the organisation of the results due to the seriousness of the matter,” said De Klerk.
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AfriForum said the withdrawal point for Vredefort’s water is only 1km from the sewage spill.
“It is precisely in Vredefort where there are also confirmed cases of cholera and a resident died from this virus. This information further proves that the Vaal River is indeed infected with cholera.
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“There are several places where the raw sewage flows into the river due to infrastructure that is burnt out or is simply not available, load shedding and the fact that there is no emergency assistance such as generators or emergency pumps.”
The lobby group is calling on the the Department of Water and Sanitation (DWS) to intervene while also offering to help.
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“We told them we are prepared to help but unfortunately have not received any feedback,” said De Klerk.
Karien Viljoen from Save Ngwathe took a video on Thursday at the manhole in question, where it appears that even blood is flowing out of the manhole.
The DWS and the municipality are allegedly aware of this overflowing manhole.
LONDON – A newly released cache of FBI files has revealed a potential plot to assassinate Queen Elizabeth II during her 1983 visit to California.
The possible threat followed a phone call made by ‘a man who claimed that his daughter had been killed in Northern Ireland by a rubber bullet’, according to the document that also refers to a bar frequented by Irish Republican Army (IRA) sympathisers.
The queen and her husband Prince Philip visited the west coast of the United States in February and March 1983, and the trip passed off without incident.
Four years earlier in 1979, IRA paramilitaries opposed to British rule in Northern Ireland killed Louis Mountbatten, the last Colonial Governor of India and an uncle of Philip, in a bomb attack.
The file states that the man claimed he was going to attempt to harm the queen “by dropping some object off the Golden Gate Bridge onto the royal yacht Britannia when it sails underneath”.
Alternatively he “would attempt to kill Queen Elizabeth when she visited Yosemite National Park”, they added.
A separate file among the documents, dated 1989, pointed out that while the FBI was unaware of any specific threats against the queen, ‘the possibility of threats against the British monarchy is ever present from the Irish Republican
Army’.
The queen, who died last September aged 96, has previously been reported to have been the target of other assassination plots.
In 1970, suspected IRA sympathisers unsuccessfully attempted to derail her train west of Sydney, while in 1981 the IRA tried to bomb her on a visit to Shetland, off the northeast coast of Scotland.
In the same year, a mentally disturbed teenager fired a single shot towards the queen’s car during a visit to New Zealand.
Christopher Lewis fired a single shot as she toured the South Island city of Dunedin.
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The botched attempt was covered up by police at the time and only came to light in 2018 when New Zealand’s Security Intelligence Service (SIS) spy agency released documents following a media request.
Also in 1981, another teenager fired six blanks at her during the monarch’s ‘trooping the colour’ birthday parade in central London.
The queen quickly calmed her startled horse and carried on while the teenager told soldiers who disarmed him he had ‘wanted to be famous’.
The following year, in one of the most famous security breaches of her reign, Michael Fagan managed to get into the queen’s bedroom and spent 10 minutes talking to her before she could raise the alarm.