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Cape Town - People must become activists for the protection of water sources to prevent a future with no clean water, Anglican Archbishop Thabo Makgoba said in Cape Town on Friday.
“Change your lifestyle,” Makgoba told delegates at a global Water Justice conference at St George's Cathedral.
“End indifference to the importance of water,” he said in a message webcast to several global cities including New York, to cut down on travel.
He said the church could not keep silent about pollution of water, either through urban sprawl or acid mine drainage, because poor people suffered the most when there was a shortage.
Makgoba called on the church to oppose any planned development over the Philippi Horticultural Area on the Cape Flats, which boasts an underground aquifer.
He urged congregants to oppose industrial and agricultural processes that contaminate water supplies and to become activists for clean water.
He urged people to choose a stretch of beach or river and commit to regularly cleaning and removing the rubbish from it.
The Women's Guild at the cathedral had already banned polystyrene cups for tea at functions, he added.
On a personal note, he said the people who lived in Magoebaskloof, Limpopo, where he lived until his family was forcibly removed during apartheid, still battled with proper water supplies. This was because the apartheid government stopped the piped water supply to where they lived when they were removed and dumped in Hammanskraal, north of Pretoria.
The poor who live there now still struggle to get water.
