Van Riebeeck And The Water Crisis

Back in August, I wrote an article for News24 titled "The Water Crisis is Van Riebeeck's Fault" -- van Riebeeck being the man who commanded the first settlement of the Cape. The article was not published. Today News24, through the Afrikaans Die Burger, published a front page headline of the same title, in Afrikaans (pictured). OBSERVATION: My own thrust was that Van Riebeeck lived in the middle of that century which saw the rise of individualism. It is the century in which the meaning of the word “individual” changed from “indivisible” to “separate”. Infused with such ideas, Van Riebeeck arrived at the Cape -- and today it is individualism that has a lot to do with the water crisis -- for example, through the failure of water restrictions. Today's headline story is about Van Riebeeck's notion that water is privately owned. One may say that that, too, is about individualism, although this idea is not mine.