In pale blue baggies, a branded rash vest, goggles and a neoprene swimming cap, mayor Mxolisi Kaunda smiled broadly, flapped his arms wildly and flashed the thumbs-up for the assembled media cameras.

Dressed more formally before leaping into the surf, he also inspected an eThekwini Metropolitan Police guard of honour, mingled with local “influencers” and beachgoers, and had quite a few shots at goal during an informal beach soccer tournament with the Lamontville Golden Arrows.

Mxolisi Kaunda lines up a beach soccer goal against the Lamontville Golden Arrows – Pic Tony Carnie

“Durban is open for business!” he 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 or 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 seawater and to publicly disclose and compare these results against the E. coli (sewage bacteria) readings from the City’s in-house lab tests.

Those first joint test results (collected on November 24 at 10 local beaches) suggest a very close alignment between the Talbot and eThekwini readings, and also appear to demonstrate that water quality at Umhlanga’s Main beach and Bronze beach has improved considerably.

Results from both Umhlanga beaches indicate that E. coli readings are very low (around 10 cfu/100ml according to eThekwini – or somewhere between 10 and 41 cfu, according to Talbot).

TALBOT/ETHEKWINI BEACH TEST RESULTS

TALBOT/ETHEKWINI BEACH TEST RESULTS

These readings are rated “ideal”, according to Talbot – well below the 500 cfu national guideline threshold for acceptable bathing quality.

But the 24 November joint test results for several other central Durban beaches are not quite so rosy.

TALBOT/ETHEKWINI BEACH TEST RESULTS

While the Talbot and eThekwini readings suggest that E. coli levels are within the national guideline levels at Point and uShaka beaches, that’s not the case for North, Battery and Country Club beaches.

Significantly, eThekwini recorded even worse E. coli readings at these three beaches for 24 November compared to Talbot – way above the national guidelines. In the case of Country Club beach, the City reading was 64,880 cfu (compared to the lower Talbot reading of 9,208 cfu).

Unsurprisingly, Kaunda emphasised the positives, but made no mention of the fact that Talbot had recorded sky-high readings of nearly 14 million cfu in the Umgeni River (on Riverside Road near the Bird Park). The eThekwini results also show very high sewage bacteria readings at this testing point (although the City lab technicians stopped counting bacteria levels after the 241,960 cfu mark).

These results are for the Umgeni River (before it enters the sea and becomes rapidly diluted by the salty ocean), but they nevertheless illustrate that current sewage flows through the Northern Waste Water Treatment Works remain mostly untreated.

Kaunda admitted that this treatment plant was still not functioning properly.  

Deputy city manager and head of the parks and recreation department, Dr Musa Gumede, told Our Burning Planet yesterday that engineers were “working through the night” and expected to resolve the recommissioning problems in “just a few days”.

In response to questions from Our Burning Planet at the media briefing on Wednesday, Kaunda acknowledged that the City still faced a significant budget shortfall to repair sanitation infrastructure, despite receiving R185-million from national government for flood relief funding.

“It’s not adequate to fix everything, but it’s a good start,” he said.

On a more positive note, Kaunda said the national finance department recently approved another R5-billion of flood relief funding for KwaZulu-Natal, and it was expected that about R1.5-billion of this emergency funding would come to the eThekwini municipality.

To reinforce the message that things are going swimmingly on the beaches, the City also invited Brian Mpono (a director of the new Oceans Mall development in Umhlanga) to say a few words on behalf of the “Durban business” sector.

Screenshot image of Brian Mpono (Facebook)

Mpono was fulsome in his praise for the City’s response to the recent flood disaster – but less so in regard to Daily Maverick’s recent “negativity” around the beach sewage pollution crisis.

“I want to say something to the gentleman from Daily Maverick… There is no city in the world that does not have a problem… Count yourself blessed. It’s not 100%, but let’s give the city a round of applause… We won’t fix things in one night, Mr Daily Maverick! Let’s clap hands for the City of Durban and say we are now ready for the Christmas season 2022.” DM/OBP