ecently, a kindly garden enthusiast who volunteers in one of Cape Town’s public parks (I fancy myself as an amateur ‘December gardener’, which is the only time of the year I have to get stuck in) sent me a book about Cape Town’s former mayors. One of its early stories recounts a bitter debate in the City Council in the early 1800s, over the availability of fresh water and the inadequacy of the sewage system for the city’s growing population of just 75 000 at the time. “It’s like [the” I thought. The more things change …!
