South Africa braces for looming drought

Ayanda Mkhwanazi in AllAfrica.com via Health-e:
South Africa is facing a looming water shortage and experts warn we may not see it coming. "We don't know when it will happen, but we are overdue for it (drought) so we need to start planning for the worst and hope for the best," said Dr Ronnie McKenzie, managing director of the engineering company Water Resource Planning.

"The government is aware of this looming drought," he told Health-e News. "The funny part about a drought is that you don't see it coming, - you only realise it when we are two years into it. For all we know it might have already begun," said McKenzie speaking at the launch of a new government website aimed at tracking the country's water resources.

The website draws from as yet unreleased 2012 study conducted by the Water Research Commission and the Department of Water and Sanitation (DWS). The study's full results are due to be released in April.

...According to DWS Deputy Director General Deborah Mochothli, in the meantime the website should help policymakers plan as demands on water grow....

Animals of the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park, South Africa, shot by Peter Thomas, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike 4.0 International license

Western Cape fire in South Africa under control, two hotspots left

AllAfrica.com via SAPA: The Muizenberg fire that broke out over the weekend leading to hundreds of people being evacuated was under control on Thursday, Cape Town Disaster Risk Management said. "The fire is under control; we are currently dealing with hotspots in Clovelly and Constantia north," spokeswoman Charlotte Powell said. "The crews remained through the night and this morning [Thursday] helicopters will go out and inspect the area but currently the fire is under control."

By Wednesday, a total of 500 people had been evacuated since the fire began. The fire started on Sunday and was contained, but flared up again just after 2am on Monday in Muizenberg above Boyes Drive. It was fanned by strong winds. It spread to Ou Kaapse Weg, Chapman's Peak, Hout Bay, and Tokai.

One city fire-fighter sustained burn wounds and 52 frail-care residents from a Noordhoek retirement village were treated for smoke inhalation.

More than 2000 people were helping to quell the fire on Wednesday, the environmental affairs department said at the time. This figure included 150 members of the department's Working on Fire (WoF) programme, spokesman Zolile Nqayi said in a statement.

Fifty more people from Volunteer Wildfires Services and 250 WoF fire-fighters had been dispatched from other provinces to join the effort. A total of 26 aircraft had been in the air since Sunday, Nqayi said....

A 2009 fire on Cape Town's Table Mountain, shot by Warren Rohner Warren Rohner, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license 

South Africa inventions aim to stop slum fires

Terra Daily via AFP: South Africans social entrepreneurs have come up with inventions aimed at curbing deadly fires and floods in the country's crowded informal settlements. A turquoise detector no bigger than a pack of cigarettes is among the innovations being showcased at a technology exhibition in the capital Pretoria.

While a conventional fire detector is set off by smoke, Lumkani, meaning "be aware" in the Xhosa language, looks for another signal: heat. "Shack environments tend to be fairly smokey because of a lack of electrification," Lumkani's co-designer, University of Cape Town engineering lecturer Samuel Ginsberg, said.

"Shack dwellers often use fire inside their shacks for cooking. So a normal smoke detector, which is what you would use in your home, is not effective -- it would false trigger far too often." Lumkani's alarm is set off instead by a quick and unusual rise in temperature.

Fires spread quickly in the dense slums that ring many towns and cities in South Africa. Packed close together, the shacks of wood planks and plastic sheeting are often razed to the ground within minutes. A series of mid-summer fires in 2013, fuelled by gusty winds, tore through the Cape Town townships of Khayelitsha and Thembeni, leaving around 4,000 homeless in just two days...

Soweto, outside Johannesburg, shot by Medpro, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

Solving the poo problem in South Africa

Miriam Mannak in AllAfrica.com: Access to toilets for Cape Town's growing urban poor is a regular flash-point, featuring angry demonstrations and hurled allegations by competing political factions. The city - and the Western Cape province in which it is located - are governed by members of the Democratic Alliance. Most of the South Africa's people live in areas governed by the ruling African National Congress, which won over 60 percent of the votes in recent national elections.

But whoever is in charge, South Africa shares a practical and political headache with urban areas around the world: providing sanitation to an influx of people, primarily from poor rural communities. "On current evidence," writes Richard Palmer in a blog post carried on the Future Cape Town website,  "it seems the truth of the matter is that providing basic sanitation services to South Africa's poor seems too big a challenge for our major cities, regardless of who governs them."

A report by the South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC), published in March, doesn't leave much to the imagination. According to researchers, members of 1.4 million South African households don't have access to sanitation and are therefore forced to relieve themselves in the open. The bulk of them live in rural areas of KwaZulu-Natal, North West and the Eastern Cape.

Additionally, 26 percent of all South African households, 3.8 million in total, only have access to below-standard sanitation infrastructure. These facilities have crumbled and deteriorated to such extent that they can be considered unfit to be used....

A view of Soweto, shot by Medpro, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons 2.0 license

New tech offers hope of tackling TB in South Africa

Meera Senthilingam in SciDev.net: Face masks incorporating satellite tracking and cough samplers are among the new technologies being tested to help researchers in South Africa try to control the epidemic of drug-resistant tuberculosis.

Tuberculosis is the leading cause of death in South Africa, largely due to the high burden of coinfection with HIV. The country is the only one in the world, apart from neighbouring Mozambique, where the numbers of new infections are continuing to rise, according to the 2013 WHO global TB report.

“We need to disrupt transmission and stop the emergence of new cases of TB,” says Grant Theron from the University of Cape Town, who is leading a study
to investigate the disease’s spread through the population. “The epidemic of TB has changed in South Africa and the majority of people with drug-resistant TB are now contracting it directly rather than developing it over time.”

Theron is using various technologies to identify the most infectious patients in a community and track their movements.

“We’ve developed a cough aerosol sampler which can identify how much TB bacteria a patient has in their cough,” he says. “Only a few patients actually carry live, viable bacteria in their coughs and these patients pose the most risk in their communities.”...

Flood warning for Mozambique

Paul Fauvet in IOL News (South Africa): Torrential rains in southern Mozambique and South Africa on Tuesday and Wednesday have caused a major flood on the Incomati River in Mozambique. Briefing the Mozambican parliament on Thursday, the Minister of State Administration, Carmelita Namashulua, warned that the current flood was not far short of the enormous flood wave that struck the Incomati Valley in 2000.

At Ressano Garcia, on the border with South Africa, the river was measured at 10.4m on Wednesday morning – more than double the flood alert level of 5m. Namashulua said this was much higher than the last flood on the Incomati, in 2011, when the river reached 6.83m.

In 2000, the year of the worst floods in independent Mozambique’s history, the Incomati reached 10.56m. It is now just 17cm short of that record, and the authorities fear that, since more rain is forecast, the current flood could exceed the levels of 2000.

The Incomati takes a long and meandering path through southern Mozambique before it reaches the sea about 30km north of Maputo. It will take two or three days for the flood surge to travel that distance.

In about 48 hours, the flood would reach Manhica district, said Namashulua. When that happens, it would sweep across the country’s main north-south highway. That would, almost certainly, as with previous floods, cut all overland traffic between Maputo and the centre and north of the country....

US Air Force activity over a flooded Mozambique in 2000

Flood havoc in Johannesburg

AllAfrica.com via SAPA: Several areas in Johannesburg are flooded, the Gauteng provincial government said on Friday. "Co-operative governance and traditional affairs' provincial disaster management centre (PDMC), together with emergency management services (EMS), are working round the clock to respond and offer aid in affected areas," said PDMC head Elias Sithole.

The most affected areas in the province were the City of Johannesburg and Ekurhuleni. Temporary accommodation, food parcels and blankets were provided to people displaced by the floods. "About 70 shacks in the Vusimuzi informal settlement near Tembisa, in Ekurhuleni, were flooded, and about 25 displaced families were moved to the community hall," Sithole said.

The PDMC and the municipal disaster management centre (MDMC) in the area had also cleared flooded roads and school yards in the municipality. "Blocked stormwater drainages were unblocked and the dammed water was able to flow, relieving the flooded roads."

About 90 shacks in Kliptown, Soweto, had also been flooded due to heavy rains in the area....

Soweto Township, shot by Matt-80, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license 

South Africa at increased risk from tropical cyclones

Money Web (South Africa): Wits University scientists have debunked two big myths around climate change by proving firstly, that despite predictions, tropical storms are not increasing in number. However, they are shifting, and South Africa could be at increased risk of being directly impacted by tropical cyclones within the next 40 years.

Secondly, while global warming is causing frost to be less severe, late season frost is not receding as quickly as flowering is advancing, resulting in increased frost risk which will likely begin to threaten food security.

According to Jennifer Fitchett, a PhD student in the Wits School of Geography, Archaeology and Environmental Studies (GAES), there has been an assumption that increasing sea surface temperatures caused by global warming is causing an increase in the number of tropical cyclones. But looking at data for the south-west Indian Ocean over the past 161 years,

....The big surprise came when Fitchett and Grab looked at where storms have been happening. As the oceans have warmed and the minimum sea surface temperature necessary for a cyclone to occur (26.5 degrees Celsius) has been moving further south, storms in the south-west Indian Ocean have been moving further south too.

Most cyclones hit Madagascar and do not continue to Mozambique, and those which hit Mozambique develop to the North of Madagascar, but in the past 66 years there have been seven storms which have developed south of Madagascar and hit Mozambique head-on. More notable is that four of them occurred in the past 20 years. "This definitely looks like the start of a trend," says Fitchett.

South Africa is already feeling the effects of this shift. The cyclones that hit southern Mozambique cause heavy rain and flooding in Limpopo. But according to Fitchett, the trend becomes even more concerning when one considers that the 26.5 degrees Celsius temperature line (isotherm) has been moving south at a rate of 0.6 degrees latitude per decade since 1850. "At current rates we could see frequent serious damage in South Africa by 2050," she says....

Tropical cyclone Feling near Madagascar in 2013, from the International Space Station

World cup cities say climate change is big part of planning

Anita Powell in Voice of America: The World Cup soccer tournament is getting more and more carbon-heavy, with FIFA estimating that the 2014 event in Brazil will dump 2.72 million tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere -- one million more tons than South Africa’s 2010 World Cup. Officials from both sides of the globe weigh in how they have incorporated climate change concerns into the World  Cup.

Brazil’s tourism board says it is expecting tourists to spend $10.4 billion during this year’s World Cup. That cash injection, however, will take its toll on the environment. The majority of the heat-trapping gas will come from air travel as spectators and teams fly around the world’s fifth-biggest country in order to get to the 12 different stadiums where the 64 World Cup matches will be played.  

At a meeting in Johannesburg this month, mayors from some of the world's megacities met to discuss the unique challenges -- especially climate change -- that urban areas face. The mayor of the World Cup host city of Curitiba told VOA that green planning was part of its preparations for the event.

Gustavo Fruet also said he’s looked to the last host city, Johannesburg, for lessons. “There were problems with funding, and a lack of clarity in city planning. There should be a legacy for the city and not just for an event. What we see as a positive [from Johannesburg] is that it gives visibility to the country, visibility to the city and it allowed an increase, above all, in tourism and prepared people to provide better service. So for me this is the best achievement, the great legacy -- to show quality, efficiency, and above all joy in receiving foreigners,” he said.

Johannesburg mayor Mpho Parks Tau said he believes mayors are paying attention to the issue of climate change and the World Cup. "That would help us elevate the work that we do as cities in relation to climate change. And we’ve been able to share with them our best practices in relation to energy, in relation to transportation, and other practices that we introduced in Johannesburg.”....

The Johannesburg skyline at dawn, shot by Dylan Harbour, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license 

South Africa evaluates Namibia's drought priorities

Albertina Nakale in AllAfrica.com via New Era (Namibia): Delays in processing the N$100 million pledged by South African President Jacob Zuma in drought relief aid last November have been attributed to needs and priorities listed by the Namibian government, which the South African High Commission in Windhoek says "cannot be supported."

However, it has emerged that the South African Department of International Relations and Cooperation (DIRCO) and relevant stakeholders are currently evaluating those needs and priorities with a view to structuring the package of assistance in order to give effect to president Zuma's pledge as soon as possible. The South African High Commission indicated the provision of technical aid and expertise with boreholes, provision of water tankers, the procurement of seed and food for feeding programmes listed by Namibia cannot be supported.

New Era reported exactly three months after Zuma pledged N$100 million in drought relief aid that the donation remains entangled in bureaucratic red tape. However, the South African High Commission denies that there is any bureaucratic red tape involved and that everything is moving accordingly. Regarding the latest developments on the pledge, Frans Kapofi, Secretary to Cabinet said the Namibian government is still awaiting the donation. "We are still waiting whatever will come from South Africa. The South African government has committed itself to support Namibia and it is a welcome commitment. We are waiting for such support and hopefully it will be forthcoming," Kapofi said on Monday.

On the contrary the South African High Commissioner to Namibia, His Excellency Mavivi Myakayaka-Manzini yesterday said that since early December last year, the two governments have been in discussions to facilitate the package of assistance that is aligned to the current needs and priorities of the Namibian government's drought relief response plan....

South African government should intervene in drought crisis

AllAfrica.com via the Democratic Alliance (South Africa): The DA is concerned that national government does not appear to have taken any aggressive action to mitigate the effects of what is reported to be South Africa's 'worst drought since 1933'.

According to media reports, as a result of the drought, farmers in some parts of the country have had to cull up to a third of their livestock. This could result in meat shortages in five months, seriously affecting South Africa's food security.

The DA will write to the Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, the Presidency and National Treasury requesting that an urgent Summit be convened to formulate a plan to safeguard the country's food security.

At the Summit, all stakeholders, including farmers, farming organisations, and the relevant government departments should discuss the allocation of disaster management funding for drought relief...

Capetown flooding affects 18,000 people

South African News Agency: Widespread and heavy rains have caused flooding across the Western Cape Province, which affected about 18 000 people, says the City of Cape Town.

Approximately 18 000 people in areas including Delft, Faure, Fish Hoek, Gugulethu, Hout Bay, Khayelitsha, Kraaifontein, Kuils River, Macassar, Phillippi, Scarborough, Sir Lowry's Pass, Somerset West, Strand and Vahalla Park were flooded and people have been sheltered in various halls.

Over 120 patients were also evacuated from Vergelegen Mediclinic to various hospitals when the entire hospital was submerged in water.

According to the City of Cape Town, their disaster risk management officials were providing shelter for those affected, restoring electricity, draining water systems and assessing damage to buildings and roads. The rain is expected to continue into Sunday, according to the Weather Services... 

Cape Town at night, seen from Table Mountain, shot by Discott, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Preventing and resolving future climate and natural resource-related conflicts in the Zambezi Basin: A study of Bulawayo and Chinde Districts

Notice of a paper by Tigere Chagutah at the South African Institute of International Affairs: Long-term changes in climate are likely to increase a range of risks to human security, including the risk of violent conflict. The city of Bulawayo in Zimbabwe, and Chinde district in the Zambezia province of Mozambique have been identified as areas that are highly susceptible to future climate-induced conflicts.

Although it is unlikely that climate change alone will be a direct cause of conflict, research points to the fact that it is a conflict threat multiplier that will intersect with countless other factors, including the quality of political governance, which could make the difference between adaptation or confrontation.

Empirical work on the causal relationship between climate change and conflict in different settings has yet to produce consensus. However, climate change can be linked to conflict in various ways, including increased competition over reduced and uncertain water supply; increased competition over agricultural land in the face of reduced crop yields, desertification and rising food prices; large-scale migration as a result of sea-level rise, weather changes and loss of land productivity; and diminished capacity of governments to provide services to their people in the face of increasing poverty.

The paper reports the findings of a study investigating the dynamic relationship between climate change, natural resource management and the likelihood of violent conflict in Bulawayo, which sits on a watershed between the Zambezi and Limpopo drainage basins, and Chinde district in the Zambezi delta. The paper also discusses entry points for strengthening local capacity for conflict management in Bulawayo and Chinde. It ends by outlining a research agenda towards improved understanding of the climate change, natural resource management and conflict nexus in the Zambezi basin...

On the street in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, shot by Radozw, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Water debt and leaks plague Cape Town residents

Brendon Bosworth in IPS: Nokuzola Bulana has a problem with leaks. The water that drips from the pipes of the toilet outside her home in Khayelitsha, a large semi-informal township on the fringes of Cape Town, South Africa goes to waste and drives up her water bill.

Bulana, a water activist, says she fixed the leaks in January but water on the floor at the base of the toilet, which is inside a stall painted with pink, yellow and purple stripes, and pooled on the ground outside the stall, shows that seepages persist.

In March, her eight-person home used over seven times the amount of water the city of Cape Town gives indigent households for free in a month. Bulana blames the leaks for this.  “We don’t mind to pay for the water we drink or cook with but now the water goes down the drain,” Bulana tells IPS when interviewed at her home. “I love the environment. I want to look after the water.”

Bulana is one of many South Africans whose wasted water contributes to the country’s yearly loss of more than a third of its water – a shortfall driven chiefly by leaks, according to a 2012 report from the South African Water Research Commission. These losses cost municipalities more than 731 million dollars annually and drive poor citizens into debt they often cannot afford to pay.

South Africa is also the 30th driest country in the world and could hit water shortages as early as 2025. It can scarcely afford to squander this resource...

Khayelitsha Township in Cape Town, shot by Chell Hill, Wikimedia Commons,  under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

South African crocodiles 'in mass escape' during floods

The BBC reports on a flood risk that nobody ever thought of: About 15,000 crocodiles have reportedly escaped from a farm in South Africa's far north amid heavy rains and flooding. The owner was forced to open the crocodile farm's gates on Sunday to prevent a storm surge, the local Beeld newspaper says.

Many of the crocodiles have been recaptured, but more than half are still on the loose, it says. The floods have killed at least 10 people in Limpopo province. The crocodiles escaped from the Rakwena Crocodile Farm, a tourist site about 15km (nine miles) from the small town of Pontdrif, which borders Botswana.

Zane Langman, the son-in-law of the farm's owner, told the newspaper that many of the crocodiles had escaped into dense bush and the Limpopo River, the second biggest in South Africa. "There used to be only a few crocodiles in the Limpopo River. Now there are a lot. We go to catch them as soon as farmers call us to inform us about crocodiles," said Mr Langman....

Crocodiles in South Africa, shot by Dewet, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license

Southern Africa is the region most affected by climate change

Clemencia Jacobs in AllAfrica.com via the Namibia Economist: Climate change is the greatest threat to humanity and the grand irony is that humans might be the architects of their own downfall, said Derek Hanekom, South Africa's Deputy Minister of Science and Technology at the signing of a declaration that will establish a regional science centre to support cross-border research into climate change.

Speaking at the signing ceremony on Wednesday last week, Hanekom said although sub-Saharan Africa is not the biggest culprit when it comes to pollution, it is the most affected by the impact of climate change.

Five southern African countries, Namibia, South Africa, Zambia, Angola and Botswana, with the assistance of the German government, will establish the Southern Africa Science Service Centre for Climate Change and Adaptive Land Management (SASSCAL). The signing of the joint declaration effectively inaugurated the centre.

SASSCAL aims to strengthen trans-boundary science and technology development in the SADC region using regional and international expertise.

Also speaking at the ceremony, Zambia's Minister of Education, Science, Vocational Training and Early Education, Dr John Phiri, said for too long Africa has relied on data and information on climate change from scientists outside the continent, therefore SASSCAL would come in handy.

"We have tended to look at climate change, food security and poverty challenges separately. We know that 60% of our people live in rural areas, we also know that 90% of our rural population depend on agriculture; most important of all, we do know the future climate predictions give a much more uncertain climatic condition for agriculture, with potentially devastating negative consequences.

Victorian Falls bridge, Zambian side, shot by Florence Devouard, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported

Definite trend of underinsurance in South African agriculture

Janine Noble in ITINews via CIB Insurance Administrators (South Africa): Severe weather conditions recently recorded throughout South Africa, such as the heat wave and fires in the Western Cape and erratic rainfall in the Mpumalanga and Limpopo provinces, has highlighted the urgent need for farmers to reassess their risk management processes.

This is according to Jonjon Smit, Director at CIB Insurance Administrators, who says that climate change and unpredictable weather patterns will continue to threaten the financial survival of farmers who do not have effective risk management policies in place in 2012.

...He says that underestimating the replacement value of farming equipment, combined with a failure to regularly review their policies, means that the percentage of South Africa's farmers who are underinsured could be as high as 70%.

"There is a definite trend of underinsurance in the agriculture industry," says Smit. "Based on our claims experience, we estimate that between 60% and 70% of farmers are underinsuring their key assets. The result is that many farmers could face financial ruin if they are unable to afford to replace these assets."...

A pumpkin harvest in South Africa, shot by NJR ZA, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

After apartheid, Tutu aims at 'huge enemy' climate change

Terra Daily via AFP: Nobel Peace laureate Desmond Tutu on Sunday branded climate change a "huge, huge enemy" that threatened the common home of humanity, imperilling rich and poor alike. At a rally on the eve of the 12-day UN climate talks in Durban, Tutu said that after the battle to crush apartheid, mankind must now unite in the goal of conquering carbon.

One the great figures in the effort to end whites-only rule, the 80-year-old former archbishop thanked other countries that had backed the long campaign, especially those in Africa who had taken in refugees and the children of anti-apartheid fighters.

"Now we are facing another huge, huge enemy. And no one, no country can fight that enemy on his own... an enemy called global warming, climate change," he said. "We have only one home. This is the only home we have. And whether you are rich or poor, this is your only home... you are members of one family, the human race."

He added: "You who are rich, you have to come to our side. And we will be waiting for you, on the other side."...

Poor affected by climate change

Lee Rondganger in the Daily News (South Africa): Weather patterns are changing rapidly in South Africa and severe weather events, such as drought, tornadoes, floods, and other natural disasters, will become common unless drastic action is taken to curb climate change. This is according to Edna Molewa, Minister of Environmental Affairs who was addressing a pre-COP17 summit in Durban on Tuesday, before the global climate talks due to be held at the Inkosi Albert Luthuli International Convention Centre next week.

She was addressing the nine social development MECs from across the country, scientists and a host of government officials who are readying themselves for next week’s 17th Conference of the Parties of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP17). Molewa who will lead the South African delegation at COP17, said climate change was the biggest sustainable development challenge of our time.

“The latest scientific reports tells us that our country will become drier in the west and wetter in the east, accompanied by an increase in the frequency of severe weather events, such as drought, tornadoes, floods, and other natural disasters…

“We, as a developing country, seek a global regime that ensures that climatic changes do not reach dangerous levels, whilst recognising that priority for developing countries is to address poverty and socio-economic development,” she said....

Climate change set to exacerbate child vulnerability in South Africa

SABC (South Africa): Climate change will exacerbate the existing vulnerabilities of children in South Africa, unless mitigation and adaptation strategies are child-sensitive and timeously implemented. ‘Exploring the Impact of Climate Change on Children in South Africa’ study made public on Saturday highlights the likely impact of climate change on children’s health, education, nutrition, safety and access to adequate housing and sanitation in South Africa – both directly and indirectly.

The study presents a body of evidence that South Africa’s climate is already changing, with increases in average annual temperatures and slight decreases in rainfall in recent decades. In future all regions of the country are projected to be warmer, particularly inland. According to scientific models rainfall variability countrywide will increase, with consequences for the incidence of flooding and drought.

The burden of dealing with the impact of these changes in climate will not be distributed evenly across society. Children represent more than a third of South Africa’s population and are one of the social groups most vulnerable to climate change. Research shows that many of the main killers of children – diarrhoea, under-nutrition, and malaria – are highly sensitive to climatic conditions.

"In the context of existing poverty and HIV and AIDS, climate change is likely to deepen the vulnerability of children in South Africa,” said Aida Girma, UNICEF Representative. "Children are more susceptible than adults to the adverse effects of environmental degradation because of their physical, cognitive and physiological immaturity."...

School children at Imperial Primary School in Eastridge, Mitchell's Plain (Cape Town, South Africa). Picture taken by Henry Trotter