[imagesource:here]

Before the Great Knysna fire devastated nearly 60 500 hectares of land, from George to Tsitsikamma in the East, other parts of the Western Cape saw a spate of destructive fires.

These spurred conspiracies that arsonists were at work, in what could be a politically motivated campaign.

But the conclusions made by South Africa’s premier forensic expert, Dr David Klatzow, revealed no trace of arson, writes Rebecca Davis for Daily Maverick.

Commissioned by civil rights organisation AfriForum to investigate the causes of the Knysna fires, Klatzow announced that, although his initial suspicion was that arson would be involved, “deliberate human agency as a political tool needed to be eliminated”:

“My investigations showed that an accidental fire started at Dam se Bos, east of Knysna,” Klatzow’s report reads. He believes this fire may have been the result of children playing in the veld with matches, or a similar scenario. “This fire spread southwards to involve the Pezula Estate, and went on through the wooded areas to reach Plettenberg Bay. The ferocity of this set of fires was exacerbated by the prolonged drought and the development of gale-force winds (which rendered the fire almost unstoppable).”

An unrelated fire in western Knysna, meanwhile, had started as a result of a “well-documented lightning strike” some weeks earlier, which had caused the forest to smoulder steadily. On the morning of 7 June, this was “fanned to significant flaming combustion” by the wind.

“That fire finally jumped The Heads and met up with the other fire,” Klatzow explains in the documentary. These were the two main origins of what has come to be known in some quarters as the Great Knysna Fire.

Though dry and windy conditions were responsible for the rapid spread of the fire, Klatzow suggests that human action could still have prevented much of the disaster. In particular, he says that the fire which began in western Knysna as a result of lightning should have been addressed by authorities beforehand.

“The main lesson is to realise that given the climactic situation and smouldering combustion, that should have been attacked much earlier,” Klatzow told journalists on Tuesday. “If there were bureaucratic constraints, they need to be looked at. If that fire was attacked when it was a teenager, we would not be here having this discussion.”

So basically half the fault lies with the Knysna Fire Department?

Of course, that suggestion goes against the one made by the Chief of Fire and Rescue in Knysna, Clinton Manuel, that “fires were started deliberately boils down to the appearance of some burnt pine cones – commonly used as kindling – in an area where no pine trees grew, and in an area where the fire was estimated to have started”.

Read all about that here.

However, both Klatzow and AfriForum CEO Ernst Roets clarified that the “investigation was limited to determining the origins of the fire rather than pointing fingers at how it was handled” even though Klatzow claimed that:

…the Knysna Fire Department’s report pinpointed the location of the fire’s origin incorrectly, and that the report “quoted local residents out of context in a way that changes what they said”.

The findings were presented in an AfriForum documentary, titled Knysna: From the Ashes, which includes:

…heart-wrenching interviews with Knysna locals who lost everything in the flames, though some may disagree with some of their observations – for instance, that “all of a sudden people [in Knysna] are equal”, and “there is no class difference between poor and rich any more”.

From Grace Mugabe to these findings, it’s clear, as Davis points out, that AfriForum will be the “ever more vocal, high-profile thorn in the government’s side”.

Just what we need, I say.

This isn’t the AfriForum doccie mentioned earlier, but there are some pretty touching moments in this short video below:

[source:dailymaverick]