It never rains… but fake news keeps pouring

OOPS! It seems that, in my anxiety about our city’s water crisis I have fallen victim to some fake news, and I do apologise for passing it on. Retired German Air Force officer Hans-Dieter Schell, who now lives in Cape Town, wrote to tell me the story about Germany donating R2.6 billion to Cape Town to help sort out our water crisis is completely untrue.

He describes it as “an incredible fake”; and apparently there was a retraction published. I missed it.

I took my information from a letter published in this newspaper and accepted it as being factual. I’m sorry. I wonder why people spread fake stories like that? I also had several letters saying the figures about the amount of water flowing through Cape Town’s underground canals was an exaggeration.

Two of the readers said they knew the man who had provided the figures, and one described him as being “great, but not always accurate”.

I hope I have not embarrassed anyone.

It’s a breeze

I caught myself out after last Thursday’s strong south-east wind ripped through the Deep South, depositing many tons of sand on the Simon’s Town railway line and completely burying parts of it under more than a metre of sand. (This is not fake news. I was in Simon’s Town and saw it for myself.)

I had a lunch date in Stellenbosch the following day, and decided it would be silly to take the Baden Powell coast road as it would obviously be buried under similar sand drifts. They happen after heavy wind storms and usually take a few days to clear.

I allowed an extra half-hour of travelling time because I planned to travel a longer route via the N2 past the airport.

Unfortunately (and I’m afraid this frequently happens to me these days), I was away in la-la land when I passed Muizenberg and missed the turning. Oh well, I thought, I’ve plenty of time so I’ll just take whatever detour they send me along.

I whooshed all the way to Stellenbosch without encountering a single sand patch, and arrived almost an hour early. I suppose that’s typical of Cape weather. It can be blowing a howling gale in one suburb and just a few kilometres away there are people enjoying a braai in perfectly calm weather.

One of my friends who works in the local hardware shop said with great confidence: “Don’t worry, it’s going to rain like hell next month.”

“February?” I said. “It doesn’t usually rain much in February.”

“This is Cape Town,” he said. “There’s no such thing a ‘usually’ in Cape Town.”

I do hope he’s right.

Last Laugh

A team of miners was lining up to go down the mineshaft at the beginning of the day, and as they prepared to get into the cage, the shift boss slapped one of them on the shoulder and shouted: “Hey! Why aren’t you wearing your headlamp?”

“Well,” said the miner, “I’m not on night shift any more, so I didn’t think I’d need it.”