A 22-year-old man drowned at Nahoon Beach in East London over the weekend when he and a group of friends went swimming while they were drunk, according to police.
Rolling blackouts and the vandalism of sewer pump stations in East London are causing major sewage spillages that are polluting the city’s beaches and rivers.
There were chaotic scenes at Nahoon beach on Saturday afternoon when emergency services personnel closed the parking lot as rescuers scrambled to locate a young drowning victim. Moments before, the victim, a man in his early 20s, disappeared under the water in the Nahoon river mouth after reportedly jumping off the rocks on the Bonza Bay side.
One of the last clean rivers in the Buffalo City Metro has been choking under raw effluent. The Gonubie River has had sewage spewing into its estuary from a pipe alongside the Tidewaters picnic site since Friday as pump stations overflow due to load-shedding. BCM spokesperson Samkelo Ngwenya said: “With the back-to-back severe load-shedding that we are experiencing, we are bound to be getting these types of challenges, but we are not folding our arms.
The Bonza Bay beach and Quenera River have been closed due to sewage spillages, with heavy rains, vandalised pump stations and load-shedding causing havoc in the already crumbling pipe system. Buffalo City spokesperson Samkelo Ngwenya confirmed the beach had been closed due to the spillage, with a notice posted on the metro’s Facebook page on Thursday.