South Africa: Loaded for Bear – Shameful Hat-Trick – Three SA World Heritage Sites Are Threatened By Sewage

South Africa has failed in its obligations as a signatory of the Unesco Convention to protect its World Heritage Sites.

No less than three Unesco World Heritage Sites in South Africa – the Cradle of Humankind, the Vredefort Dome and Robben Island – are threatened by sewage pollution.

This hat-trick of shame is probably a world record, an odious podium finish that reeks of state failure and one that will make South Africa a skunk in the hallways of Unesco.

President Cyril Ramaphosa thrust the issue back into the news cycle last week when he urged officials to stop the flow of sewage through the Cradle of Humankind, a Unesco World Heritage Site that is a treasure trove of ancient fossils of humanity’s ancestors.

We reported on this issue last year, and so have other media houses. The Percy Steward Wastewater Treatment Works operated by a demonstrably incompetent Mogale City administration has collapsed and is spewing untreated sewage into the Blaaubankspruit, which flows past the famed Sterkfontein Caves.

A year after, it seems nothing has been done and Mogale City officials will forever be tarnished in South African history by their negligence, which has fouled a site of immense importance to the study of pre-history.

“This situation poses…