#22 Countries under water

In this week’s newsletter 👇

• 🌊 Africa’s extreme flooding hotspots
• 🛤️ Rail travel runs out of track
• 🦈 Shark attacks
• 💰 Robberies down in hotspots
• 🛒 Our monthly grocery basket comparison
• 👟 How fast can you run?

Nearly one in four of the world's population (1.8-billion people) lives in areas at risk of extreme flooding, say scientists. Nearly 90% of them live in low- and middle-income countries, particularly China and India, the most populous countries. More than 200-million people are at risk in Africa, estimated scientists in a study published in Nature Communications.

There are three main types of flood, the first is when rivers overflow because of glacier melt or high rainfall. For example, a large share of the population is at risk in Egypt, where people are concentrated along the Nile. The second type, flash floods or surface water floods, can happen anywhere, even where there isn’t a body of water nearby. They occur when urban drainage systems become overwhelmed or a torrent of water is triggered by torrential rain. The third type is coastal flooding, caused by cyclones, tsunamis, and sea level rise.

Passenger rail travel has been in decline for years in South Africa. Between 2008 and 2019 travel on trains dropped from around 50-million a month to just 10-million. And then the Covid-19 lockdown happened, which put the final nail in the coffin for passenger rail.

In July 2022 there were just 1-million monthly trips, a staggering 98% decline from the 52-million trips in 2008. Given the current state of railway maintenance (and theft) there seems little hope that we’ll see the resurgence of train travel.

On Sunday a shark fatally attacked Cape Town restauraneur Kimon Bisogno in Plettenberg Bay, while she was swimming. This wasn’t the first fatal shark attack in Plett this year. Local Bruce Wolov died in June from a shark attack while swimming.

In South Africa, most shark attacks occurred when the victims were surfing, followed by swimming. Other activities include spearfishing, bodyboarding and surf-skiing. The vast majority of shark attacks happen along the coasts of the United States and Australia, according to Global Shark Attack File.

South Africa recorded only eight shark attacks between 2019 and 2022, but three of those were fatal and two happened this year. The third fatal attack was in April 2021 when Robert Frauenstein disappeared in East London while surfing. His bodyboard was later found with bite marks, suggesting a shark had attacked him.

💰 Home robberies down in GP hotspots, up in KZN

Before the Covid-19 pandemic in 2019, three precincts reported the highest number of home robberies. The precincts were all in Gauteng – Honeydew, Diepsloot, and Sandton. But the number of home robbery cases in these precincts dropped during the pandemic lockdowns and have remained relatively low.

In some KwaZulu-Natal precincts, on the other hand, home robberies have increased since the lockdowns, particularly in Verulam, Plessislaer (in Pietermaritzburg), and KwaDukuza. This could be because of gang activity, said Lizette Lancaster, of the Institute of Security Studies.

The police distinguish between robberies and burglaries in the crime stats. Burglaries happen when victims are not at home or asleep. But robberies are much more frightening, according to the SAPS, because the victims are present and “they are unaware whether the intention of the perpetrators is only to rob them or also to cause them physical harm”.

Check out how many robberies and burglaries were reported at your nearest police precinct using our interactive chart.

🛒 Grocery basket prices dip

Every month we collect data on the prices of a set of standard household groceries. The good news is that this month’s basket comes in a little cheaper than last month’s. The grocery item that most affected the overall price of our basket this month was sunflower oil. In August, retailers sold two litres for an average of R110. But when we collected the data for September, the price had dropped by R15 in many places. The cheapest place to buy house brand sunflower oil? Shoprite at R79.99, followed by Checkers at R89.99.

In other good consumer news, the petrol price went down in September (and it will probably go down again in October), and inflation decreased by 0.2% between July and August.

👟 How fast can you run?

It took Eliud Kipchoge 2 hours 1 minute and 9 seconds to run 42.2km on Sunday in Berlin. The Kenyan smashed his previous marathon record by 30 seconds, averaging 2 minutes 52 seconds per kilometer during the Berlin Marathon. If you’re a runner you probably have some idea of how fast that is, but, in case not, we’ve put together a handy tool to help you calculate how far you’d be behind Kipchoge if you ran against him.