If only leaders did their jobs

The 2022 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP27) in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, began on Tuesday and will end next Friday.

“As we face the collective threat of climate change, COP27 is an opportunity for world leaders to show solidarity – and take concerted action – when we need it most,” the COP27 website states.

If the line above didn’t put you to sleep, well done, you’re made of sterner stuff than I. Scientists have been warning about climate change for decades and were pooh-poohed out of their lab coats until real time effects were seen across the globe this year, with devastating consequences.

This year at COP27, world leaders will once again sit with eyes glazed and thumbs a-twiddle while the world burns and drowns in equal measure, all to issue magnificent statements of portentous import, saying with one voice: “We must do the things!”

Ja, boet, we know, we’re living all the things down here on the ground, where few ministers wish to tread. Our heads of state will have flown to Egypt on the taxpayers’ ticket and stayed in fantastic hotels with their retinues while the rest of us wade through plastic littered beaches, avoid E.coli-ridden lagoons and rivers and stay shy of holiday spots where local businesses are holding on for dear life.

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On 23 August, the Umhlanga Urban Improvement Precinct said the eThekwini municipality had announced its beaches were to be closed with immediate effect.

Some have since reopened, although playgrounds to the not so fabulously wealthy and home to many landlocked South Africans, Westbrook, Bronze, Laguna, eThekwini, Umhlanga, Umdloti, and Umgababa beaches remained closed as of Wednesday. And the holiday season is barely three weeks away.

At the famous Whale Bone pier of Umhlanga Rocks, a marine biologist taking samples of molluscs from rocks to test for chemicals from the chemical spill of the July riots, gave the strong impression he would not go swimming in the ocean. Indeed, the promenade loved by many for their daily ocean runs, is closed at the lagoon end due to the lagoon being so badly polluted.

According to a local business owner, since Covid hit, the Umhlanga beach has been open for five months. In the Western Cape, the Mail & Guardian reported Milnerton Lagoon in serious trouble after a recent fish die-off, the second one this year, caused by sewage pollution.

It also reported Isipingo beach is closed due to sewage pollution. And the squeeze-toy response from municipal managers and politicians is: “We’re doing all the things!”

Nee, boet, you’re not. If you were, none of this would have happened in the first place. If you were managing municipalities and portfolios properly instead of cadres – be they Democratic Alliance or ANC – then the pollution would never have happened in the first place.

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If world leaders were doing the very basic requirements of their jobs, then the climate conference would not be needed. If the conference was not needed, then we would not be carbon dumping on an epic scale attending these do’s which are little more than slack-jawed, glad-handing photo opportunities for leaders to portray their willingness to do all the things.

If only they would do the bare minimum of actual work – and stop talking so much.