As a nation, South Africa is well and truly in the soup

WE ARE, as a nation, in the soup in more ways than one.

A lesson or two from the past will vividly illustrate just how deep.

John Snow in London could illustrate that water could be a source for transmission of cholera, since cases were clustered around a single well in Broad Street in 1854.

Cholera, typhoid and diarrhoea can be spread by drinking water contaminated by sewage.

Should water be adequately chlorinated?

In January 1916 the chlorination plant in Milwaukee, Wisconsin ceased functioning for seven hours only. In that brief time, the water pumped from Lake Michigan caused about 75 000 cases of diarrhoea and 500 of typhoid fever, with 60 deaths.

Keeping that in mind, in South Africa at this moment, 101 years later, we have about 850 sewage treatment plants, of which only about 280 are functioning reasonably well. We are literally, as a nation, knee-deep in a foul-smelling soup.

This represents a failure of primary health care.

Of course we are, figuratively speaking, probably deeper in the soup.

Need we list the problems again? Junk economic status and an economic recession, a failure to manage the economy of South Africa.

Dysfunctional rail and air services broaden the picture.

Eskom is in a complete mess: failure to honestly manage and distribute electricity – the management, and possibly the relevant minister, failed the country.

It, furthermore, seems that the constitution is regarded as “just an incomprehensible piece of paper”. The governing and dominant party has failed the country.

Then there is the unavoidable spectre of huge chunks of bribery, corruption and deception.

We have failed our fellow-citizens and blinded them with trappings: housing, renewable sources of electricity and water (but the variety that tends to kill you).

And we blame minorities defined by race: we have failed to be inclusive and now we play the race card. We are in deep soup indeed. In the Middle Ages, people died of waterborne diseases without even knowing that the water was the source of the sickness until some clever person observed that cholera cases tended to manifest around watering points with water drawn from rivers or fountains.

Since then, efforts have been made to ensure clean water supplies. Ben Smit Melkbosstrand