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What Now?

The ocean has been pounding the Cape coast most of the week, huge 6 meter swells have crashed into the shore line, in a way it’s so majestic, but also terrifying. I can sit and watch it for hours, but there is another side that scares me, brings back memories of how merciless one feels out there bobbing in a small craft in a raging storm – there is nothing so scary. It was just this that was the cause of the Seli 1 running aground nearly two years ago one stormy Cape Night – but this night has come back to haunt us.

I was taking a stroll down the beach, just stretching my legs after a long mountain run. The ocean has slowly begun to calm after its rage from the past week. The anger is still out there, but there is a hint of a tranquil period ahead. In the distance I could see the wreck of the grounded ship, half dismantled and basically now left to the elements to slowly do the rest, wave after wave crashing over its stricken structure, bit by bit being torn off it. The waves are like a pack of hyenas slowly tearing the carcass apart.

Some thing struck me as weird as I got closer, there was a funny smell in the air, what was it. At first I thought it was some smell from the nearby oil refinery, as I got closer I could smell the distinct vapour of heavy fuel. Then I saw the dreaded tell tale signs of crude on the beach, a small black line on the sand that just grew and grew as I looked down the beach and into the distance – this can’t be I thought. This wreck was deemed to be safe, spill free.

At the time there was such uproar about the pumping off of the oil and removal of the coal on board. I think we have all been led to believe that the wreck was now declared environmentally safe. Only last week the salvage company handed it over to the city of Cape Town. The closer I got the stronger the swell and the bigger the beach spill. What a sorry sight. The ocean had a layer of black sheen on it as it seemed to heave twist and turn, in a way trying to get away from it, bit by bit the waves managed to vomit this poison out onto the pristine beach.

Just further down a Seal pup lay dead and twisted in this black poisonous blanket, a stark warning of what might still await us. Oil what a necessary evil – wars rage continuously about it, families destroyed because of it, individuals greed for profit from it seems to consume any drop of sanity that they might have. Countries across this African continent lie smoldering from continuous oil fever. It also seems to be the biggest fuel to corruption. This is the story that follows this black gold, but who in the end is the biggest looser?

Ironically its Mother nature, from whose nurturing bosom this poison flows.

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