A line in the sand
The holiday hordes invading beaches over the festive season are going to have less sand to squeeze onto this year — the Cape Town municipality has closed Mosterd’s Bay beach in Strand due to work on the seawall there. The wall is needed to protect the road that runs alongside the beach, and the adjacent seafront apartment blocks, from storm surges. The beach, a popular destination for swimmers, dog walkers and anglers, will be closed from December 15 to January 15. The city said alternative beaches are close by.
Leave it on the scrap heap
A largely unfenced infantry base in Makhanda has become a killing field. Unexploded ordnance such as grenades, picked up by residents of nearby informal settlements, is the problem. In 1998 two children were killed when a device they picked up exploded; a third child lost an eye. In 2005, three people, including a five-year-old boy, died when a mortar bomb taken from the area exploded. In 2021, a scrap-metal scavenger lost both legs when grenades from the base blew up in his house. This year another scavenger died in an explosion in the camp’s training area. The department of defence says it has no money to repair the fence.
Sloppy sentiment
The Economist magazine has picked its word of the year. First coined in the 1400s, “slop” has gained contemporary fame as the descriptor for the muck and slush that, six centuries later, clog up the internet with drivel. But, says the magazine, “think of the positives”. Amid all the slop, “trust in established organisations might rebound” [They must mean the FM. Ed.] A case, then, says The Economist, for sloptimism?
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