Mistake to change river’s course

The Earl of Bathurst wrote in a letter to Lord Charles Somerset that the Albany district was by far the most beautiful and most fertile area of the settlement.

“I know not how to give an idea of it, except to say that it resembles a succession of parks from the Bushman’s River to the Great Fish River” (Toposcope 2023 p24, cited by Gess S).

Despite the appalling poverty and malnutrition over so much of this area, this opinion largely remains true today these parks are well managed and manicured farms.

One place that is particularly redolent of this description is Kasouga, named after the blind river that feeds one of the last remaining pristine wetlands, sustains bird life and is the home of a one-time endangered estuarine pipefish (see note 2 below). A place I know very well.

Or at least this was true until late September 2023.

At this time, the river was in flood and threatened to spill out onto the floodplain. That of course is what floodplains are for. That is also the reason why no matter what historical precedent, it is unwise to build on the floodplain. A couple of houses on The Green (floodplain) were threatened by possible flooding.

People in the Western Cape know exactly what that is like homes under water and the horror of loss.

And so the custodians of the river panicked. Permission was received from Ndlambe to cut a trench to release the water and save the houses.

Instead of digging the trench so that it curved left and allowed the river to fill up over the dunes, a brutal canal was dug straight out to sea. And so it remains more than a month later. Millions of litres of water flow into the sea. Farmers up river may face serious water shortage in the drought to come.

The river is lower and drier than it has been in severe drought. The wetland is dry and the fish unlikely to cope with the change in the water.

This river was historically blind, occasionally breaking through at its own pace. It was a paradise for small children, safe swimming and boating and most of all it was beautiful.

No more. The river is empty, the lagoon has largely gone, the sand to close it off again slow in returning. It is an ecological and an aesthetic disaster. No matter how many photographs are posted about the lagoon and river now, it is no more. The river, the beach and the beauty have been destroyed.

From this swirl of water, an old wreck re-emerged in full.

Parts of this wreck had been visible for years. It is the Cape St

Blaize fishing trawler, run aground in 1965 and never salvaged. The fact that this wreck re-emerged in full is the perfect metaphor for the wreck of the river. It is the stark symbol of the overzealousness that took over, a stark symbol that it is easy to wreck a place in hours and it will take years to recover.

There is a gin with the same name. The wreck of the St Blaize is a piece of Eastern Cape history. The destruction of the Kasouga river in 2023 will equally become part of that history.

This was a curious event. Many of its inhabitants claim to be the sole custodians of the astounding beauty that surrounds them the indigenous bush, the antelope, the birds and the coast.

They should know that climate change will cause flooding, that people should build away from floodplains and that if they don’t there will be natural consequences.

The sand may well come back and return the river to its blind state. The lagoon may fill up, the wetlands survive. But this opening of the river should never have happened.

Note 1. Not a single suggestion was made in the Western Cape, in KZN or Gauteng, when in flood, that the course of the rivers could or should be changed. It is where people choose to live that is the problem, not the river.

Note 2. Changes in water flow, at least partly through current management practices, may explain much of the plight of the estuarine pipefish.

The construction of dams and impoundments greatly affect river flow, as do changing land use practices. A large flood event in 2003 coincided with apparent local extinction of this pipefish in the East Kleinmonde Estuary. Another flood in the Kariega Estuary, in 2012, removed almost all of the eelgrass beds where this species lives. Along with habitat loss, local water flow (prolonged droughts or floods, whether real or from regulation) affects the supply of zooplankton for the pipefish, particularly early juveniles.

Loss of river flow can therefore result in a breakdown in the life cycle of this species.

Editor’s note: We asked Ndlambe Municipality to confirm that they gave permission for a trench to be dug to divert water from the houses on Kasouga’s floodplain; we had not yet received a response by the time of publishing and will publish it once we do. TOTT cannot confirm that the description here reflects the current state of the river.