Cape Town - Greenpeace Africa has expressed dismay that President Jacob Zuma did not provide sustainable solutions to important environmental matters that threaten South Africa’s resources, when he delivered his State of The Nation Address (SONA) this week.
“It is disheartening that the President continues to show a complete lack of leadership in adequately tackling the key environmental issues plaguing South Africa,” the environmental organisation said.
The organisation pointed out that Zuma “failed to provide sustainable solutions to combat the severe drought that is currently decimating our already water scarce country”.
Greenpeace said the fact that nuclear procurement was going ahead was “indicative of the short-sightedness of the current leadership”.
Furthermore, “the President did not mention the obvious connection between the looming water crisis facing South Africa and the country’s continued dependence on coal, or the effect that coal power is having in driving extreme weather events such as the current drought”.
Greenpeace Africa concluded that the South African government was in “denial of the real and everyday impacts that the drought is having on South Africa”.
This, the organisation said, “is both worrying and aberrant, as South Africa’s leadership continues to ignore the everyday struggles of the country’s citizens”.
The organisation said it believed that the country needed to steer away from the use of fossil fuels and turn toward renewable energy sources that did not “compromise the country’s scarce water resources”.
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