Durban’s once-popular blue flag holiday beach status that attracted tens of thousands of festive season tourists, has lost its allure — and simply blaming the floods has long since become an unacceptable excuse to residents, business and key stakeholders.
Tourism industry bosses remain sceptical about the eThekwini municipality meeting its end-November deadline to fix the metro’s decaying and flood ravaged sewerage infrastructure that is causing raw sewerage to wash into the beaches. They have been monitoring various epicentres and are adamant that the cause of the problem is decaying infrastructure and the floods merely exacerbated the problem.
At the heart of what is having a dire effect on the popular Golden Mile, and its north coast corridor beaches from Umhlanga to Zimbali, is the dangerous E. coli bacteria that lurks in ever-fluctuating levels .
Raw sewerage is flowing freely into the ocean and opposition parties have called into question the validity of the tests being conducted by the city. They are calling for independent scientists to conduct water tests, and are appealing to residents to stay away from the beaches until contaminations are verified.
“The general infrastructure decay and the city’s failure to address the crisis timeously and convincingly has robbed the famed playground of South Africans of a holiday season that the tourist industry was desperately depending on, to try to recover from the financial ruin from the triple blows of Covid-19, the July 2021 riots and the April floods,” said Umhlanga Tourism Association chair Duncan Heafield.
The upmarket Umhlanga tourism hub that features Durban’s iconic landmark lighthouse, and its sister tourism villages such as Glenashley, Westbrook and Zimbali are recording a significant drop in bookings for the festive season.
“We normally expect 100,000 tourists in the northern corridor but that is not to be. The hospitality industry is experiencing 20%-30% cancellations and that equates to losses of R25-R30m per day.
“There has been clear apathy from the municipality to repair the pump stations and key tourism road lines timeously, and all we have received is lip service from the municipality,” Heafield said.
“It is not a tap-on, tap-off situation. It takes up to 10 days for the beaches to be up and running. There is a critical ecosystem that must be considered, as well as but not limited to getting the lifeguards on duty, inspection of the shark netting and notification to all stakeholders,” added Heafield.
EThekwini mayor Mxolisi Kaunda announced recently that the Treasury had allocated R184m to the sanitation infrastructure repairs. “But the funds are inadequate, and the city had to do an aggressive reprioritisation of its budgets to address the damage in the metro. The estimated cost of the repairs is R160m for pump stations and more than R300m for water treatment works alone to ensure beaches are opened.”
The safety of the public is paramount, and the quality of the water is regularly tested by independent institutions. “The flood damage to several pump stations and wastewater treatment plants gave rise to the contamination of popular tourist beaches. The repairs would be completed before the festive season [end-November],” Kaunda had said.
Opposition parties are fed-up and have accused the municipality of putting the lives and livelihood of residents at risk. ActionSA in KwaZulu-Natal has taken the matter to court.
“The main reason we opted to go to court is because we feel the city is negligent in opening the beaches. Given the high levels of E. coli which we personally witnessed for ourselves on beaches that were open to swimming, we want the court to rule on regular tests being undertaken by independent scientists,” said provincial chairperson Zwakele Mncwango.
“We fear that people’s health is at risk and if not contained we could see a widespread bacterial outbreak for the festive season. Yes, we care about the economy, but we cannot allow people’s lives to be at risk,” he added.
According to health experts E. coli is one of the most prominent causes of many common bacterial infections including urinary tract infections, diarrhoea and clinical infections such as neonatal meningitis and pneumonia. It produces toxins that can also affect organs in humans that lead to long term health complications, some of which could be fatal.
DA councillor Sakhile Mngadi said that 17 of 23 major sewage pump stations were still not working, and eThekwini was putting people’s lives at risk by opening the beaches. “My advice to residents is to stay away from the beaches until independent tests can verify the claims of the city. Treat all information regarding this as unverified until independent scientists can provide unbiased reporting.”
After concerns from its members, the Durban Chamber of Commerce and Industry took to securing funds from the private sector to assist the municipality to address the flood damage. Through these efforts, the private-sector contribution to fix the city’s infrastructure runs into billions.
“Tourism is the lifeblood of the festive season economy. It is why we reached out to the municipality in the first place. The risk of losing this peak tourism season is something we cannot sustain economically. We hope the deadlines set by the city are met,” said Durban Chamber of Business and Industry CEO Palesa Phili.
Durban’s economic woes began with the Covid-19 lockdown, and just as it was showing promising signs of recovery the metro was crippled again by the destructive July 2021 unrest that set the Durban economy back more than R70bn, during which nearly 200 deaths were recorded. The April 2022 floods dealt another crippling blow to the beleaguered provincial economy of a further R16bn and the loss of another 459 lives.
Fedhasa's Brett Tungay described the current situation as a “disaster”.
“I have had meetings with a few hoteliers this week and they are really affected. The South Coast is also affected.”
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