Bloody brilliant - Drinking water dirtier than the river water

The first good winter storm is upon us, well actually, it has moved on.

First prize goes to the local Prince Albert Municipality for the sterling work in the water supply field.

The drinking water is dirtier than the water in the river, brilliant. Well done.

No doubt there will be some pathetic attempt at justifying the situation.

Keep it up chaps, you're well on your way to stardom.

At this time of the year, we have the annual Freedom Challenge riders coming through the town. These riders have ridden from Pietermaritzburg and are on their way to Paarl, 2300km of hard riding under extremely trying conditions. http://www.freedomchallenge.org.za

The last thing they need is to pick up some stomach bug from drinking inadequately treated water in Prince Albert.

Fortunately, where they stop in Prince Albert, they have access to filtered water. No thanks to the municipality.

Welcome to Prince Albert - just don't drink the tap water.

Welcome to Prince Albert South Africa

If you're a discerning traveller, read this:

A little bit about the dark side of of the "quaint little village"

Welcome to the South African home of the Gin Trap.

Yes, while certain gin traps are outlawed in South Africa, Prince Albert has it's own little (big) cottage industry turning them out in large numbers. Yup, you can mail-order your own Terminator which you can set to catch anything from an Aardvark to an arsehole (if you catch your own fingers, that is)

Is this something new? Not at all, the business has been around for years.

And if that's not enough, you could try a little of their mail order re-packaged poison sideline. No shit, you order your "Jakkalsgif" and they post it it to you (you heard right POST it to you) Last I heard it was an offence to post poisons through the SA Post Office. This you then place in the veld to rid your world of those pesky "vermin" that made it past the Terminator.

I wonder if they have:
a) A permit to sell this poison in the manner they do
b) A set of safety procedures for the workers handling the poison
c) Permission, or a special dispensation from the SA Post Office to distribute the poison by post

I have been in the Prince Albert Post Office when these poison parcels are brought for despatch, the post office bears the nauseating smell of the poison.

Prince Albert, charming, quaint, Victorian? Or indiscriminate gin traps and illegal poisoning.

Of course this is something that most people turn a blind eye to, something that is not discussed at the braais and dinner parties, something that's not mentioned in polite conversation. And yet it happens.

And no, there's not a stall selling re-packaged poison and gin traps at the Saturday Village Market, after all, what would the tourists think?

For further enquiries, contact


Prince Albert Tannery 023 541 1411

More here
http://blogs.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendId=176290038&blogId=434008654

And this from http://www.africanconservation.org/content/view/1016/366/

"The Source of the Traps in South Africa: The Landmark Foundation discovered that a factory in Prince Albert, in the Western Cape, is "quietly going about its business" of manufacturing as many as 1200 gin traps each month - two hundred of these are leopard traps - and this while it is expressly illegal to use these devices on protected species! The factory owner, Mr Peter Schneekluth, boasts that he has 3000 farmers on his books. That means that between 12 000 and 15 000 of these traps enter the system each year! These traps can very easily be used for the next 20 years. The next time you visit the town of Prince Albert, amongst the many other beautiful tourist attractions, do go and visit Mr Schneekluth in Magrieta Prinsloo Street, in the wooden factory in the industrial area."

If you visit the town, ask your hosts where they stand on this issue and what they intend doing about it.