Desperate to demonstrate that Durban’s beaches are ‘safe’ for tourists, and locals during the festive season, eThekwini mayor Mxolisi Kaunda took a dive into the sea at North Beach on Thursday, spending time in the water for about 15 minutes.
Kaunda and a team of officials, influencers and metro police launched the festive season by displaying beach sports and highlighting a big safety push this year.
After being challenged by the Democratic Alliance (DA) last week to swim in the beaches he deemed safe, particularly Umhlanga Main Beach, Kaunda took a dip at North Beach instead.
Opposition parties on Thursday labelled Kaunda a failure for missing his deadline to completely fix the infrastructure, which was further damaged after the April floods.
“Durban is open for business!” Kaunda declared at a media briefing to announce that the majority of the city’s beaches were open once more after almost seven months of being alternatively open of shut due to the deluge of untreated human sewage and industrial effluent that has polluted the ocean in the wake of the devastating April/May floods.
“As the leadership of the city, we want to inform the public that most of our beaches are open and safe for swimming.”
Kaunda said the City had entered a partnership with the non-government watchdog group Adopt-a-River and the independent Talbot laboratory group to test the quality of sea water and to publicly disclose and compare these results against the E.coli (sewage bacteria) readings from the City’s in-house lab tests.
While Kaunda declared that the North Beach and Umhlanga Main Beach were presently safe to use, readings at both sites had varied in recent months.
Source: Business Tech, News24, Daily Maverick, image from Twitter: @ECR_Newswatch