Please do click through to Wessel Wessels’ album of photographs taken at the Theewaterskloof Dam (the largest of the six main dams that supply water to Cape Town). It makes for sobering viewing:
Theewaterskloof is currently just 25% full.
Not this bit of it, obviously.
This bit isn’t full at all.
Many cyclists have vowed to protest following the short notice cancellation of the 2017 Cape Town Cycle Tour due to dangerously high winds and a large wildfire on the route.
When asked why they would take this action, cyclist union leader Cyril Leikra responded:
“We need to show the organisers just how hard we trained for this event. If we’re not allowed to ride today, we will embark on a year long protest of civil disobedience. For us, the next 12 months was to revolve around pub stories of our struggle in the breeze at Fishhoek and the annual tough climb up Suikerbossie.
Now, we will have none of that glory. We’re angry.”
We asked Leikra what form the protest was going to take:
“We will ride on the freeways, we’ll ride two or three abreast on narrow roads – especially on weekends around Kalk Bay – and we will ignore all traffic signals on our route. Red traffic lights be damned. It will be a straightforward move – this is what we have trained for over the last year – our members are ready.”
But Cape Town residents seemed amused by the decision to protest:
“Look, if they were hoping to pull the sympathy vote to get a beer or two after the Tour, they still can. All that training for nothing. It’s genuinely sad. But the protest idea is laughable. No-one will even notice, because that’s all they do all year round anyway.”
However, from a now sweaty chair at the local Vida, a helmeted Leikra was determined to have the final word:
“I remember riding in the infamous Glencairn Hurricane of 2012. People just don’t understand. And the council’s decision to annually increase the gradient of Suikerbossie just shows how hard done by we cyclists are. It’s time we stood up for our rights and reminded people how we are victimised – something that it seems everyone has overlooked since I told them about it all day yesterday.”
Look, we’ve covered this before.
We noted the city’s request for prayers here:
Why haven’t our religious leaders been praying for rain already? And if they have, where’s the evidence? Who’s withholding the damn rain anyway, and why?
And we added a touch of sarcasm here:
Tamboerskloof vicar Rev. Denise Woodhouse stated that she had been instructed by her senior clergy to hold off any specific reference to rain in her Sunday prayers “until April or May”.
When it was pointed out to her that this was rather convenient timing, given that that’s when the seasonal rains usually begin anyway, she replied, “Yes, isn’t God amazing?” and hurried off to help with pouring the tea at the Women’s Auxiliary meeting.
But the weird thing is that with just n days of water left, people are still genuinely suggesting that prayer is the answer to the current water crisis:
Exactly what do these people think is responsible for this crisis? The underlying cause of the lack of water is simply a lack of rain.
Given that we are advised to “put our faith in God as He is the only one who can save us from the catastrophe” (as He did just after that day of prayer about 30 years ago), I’m left wondering why He hasn’t done something about this already.
Is He really sitting up there in heaven, omnipotent, but waiting for us all to worship a bit harder before He sends any precipitation to Cape Town? Are the recent floods in Gauteng a sign that they prayed harder or better than we did, or is He just trolling?
Behold what I am capable of, just up the N1! Enough rain to fill their dams (and sweep innocent schoolchildren to their deaths), but no: you’re not having any until you get yourselves to church and beg for it. And, if you’ve already been to church and begged for it, then go again and beg a bit harder.
And then, when it does eventually rain, you will praise me for granting you watery salvation, conveniently overlooking all the times I ignored your repeated and increasingly desperate prayers over the past few months.
But that’s exactly what Ilze Müller and her kind will do: drowning (pun intended) in religious confirmation bias, defending the indefensible, brainwashed and blinkered.
Still, if I can get an afternoon off work on the strength of pretending to participate in their ludicrous charade, I’m obviously all for it.
…I hope, anyway.
This post was written ahead of the weekend, precisely to leave ample time to (possibly) do some flying this morning.
I’m not sure exactly where yet – most of the peninsula having been comprehensively locked down by Table Mountain National Park – but 48 hours ahead of… well… now, the weather forecast is looking excellent for a quick trip up into the Cape Town skies (other regional atmospheric locations are available). And that makes a change, given that the infernal SouthEaster has been blowing annoyingly strongly and seemingly constantly for several years weeks now.
I’m sure you’ll be among the first to see some photos or footage assuming that I do manage to get up somewhere (ooer/careful now, etc etc).
Watch, as they say, this space.
Someone once said:
The good thing about science is that it’s true whether you believe in it or not.
And that person was right. Of course, there are other good things about science as well. I’m one of them, for example.
Sadly, not everyone respects science (or me, actually) in the way that we deserve.
I recognise that posting this on a Saturday won’t keep the cult away.
Comment moderation is, as always, enabled.
Don’t @ me, although previous experience has suggested that you surely will.
The thing is that this cherry-picking of convenient bits of scientific data is merely the gateway drug to ignoring facts altogether. I expect to see many vocal LCHFers to head down the anti-vax spiral with Uncle Tim anytime soon.