We won't take this sh!t anymore, says Milnerton

When he thinks back 25 years Richard Allen, chairman of the Milnerton Canoe Club, remembers Cape Town’s Milnerton Lagoon as a little paradise where you would see children jumping off the wood bridge into the clear, deep water.

- Sue Segar ​​​​​​​

“There were prawn holes, fish jumping everywhere – sometimes into our canoes – and people fished in the lagoon. Today, there are no prawns left, we haven’t seen a fish in years and the stench of the lagoon is disgusting. The water is black and putrid. The deterioration has been like a slow cancer.”

Allen is part of a fast-growing local movement ramping up plans to force the City of Cape Town to act on the environmental mess they’ve systematically failed to address. Several ratepayers’ organisations from areas near the lagoon have joined the fray. They’ve become so desperate at the city’s ineptitude and habit of putting “band aids on open wounds” that they’ve asked the Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse (Outa) to get involved. Outa is ready to take up the challenge, probably via the legal route.

The civic associations are also outraged at the city’s lack of transparency in providing water-quality data, which they only received after putting up a fight and then, it was on a non-disclosure basis. “I’m convinced they’re hiding something,” said Allen.

The Zimbabwe-born Allen moved to Cape Town when he was ten. Today, a marketing manager for a medical supply company and father of two, he’s “obsessed with water”: he competes in Western Province canoeing and surfskiing events and for years has been involved in development of the sports. But even that has taken a nosedive because of the polluted water.

“We had a huge canoeing club, about 300-strong, with Springboks and big groups of paddlers arriving for time trials. In years gone by, we didn’t worry about pollution and didn’t think twice about whether or not to paddle.