Suddenly, our Fire and Rescue service is dealing with a series of fires that should raise some cause for concern.
When just weeks before, an opposition party known for their past blatant attempts to disrupt operational activities within the directorate, went on the attack of our Fire & Rescue service. After we quickly discredited their baseless allegations, all seemed to go quiet from their side.
Until a few days ago, the same persons started posting baseless allegations on their social media accounts, suggesting our fire service was "under resourced."
With a fire breaking out high in the early hours of Sunday morning on the mountain range above Newlands, we have been working hard to assist SANParks in trying to extinguish the blaze.
When the fire reignited yesterday on Tuesday morning, we immediately despatched our resources to assist once again.
Then, incidently, a fire was reported on the other side of our municipality, close to the Red Hill community again.
Since we already had our Spotter plane up in the air dealing with the Newlands fire, we asked it to divert to the Simonstown area in order to provide an assessment.
The visual evidence we received was startling. The fire had been started directly alongside a deserted road, and now, just minutes later, no person was in sight.
With the Newlands fire rapidly spreading over the North face of Table Mountain, and with the flames of the Red Hill blaze being swept towards the community of Oceanview, we called in our resources from across the city to battle both major incidents.
As if this was not enough, an additional fire was reported in the early hours, this time on Black River Parkway, running through the reeds along the river bank.
Our resources were despatched and attended to all major incidents simultaneously. The suspicion and circumstances around these incidents are cause for concern, and while some persons may be going to great lengths to cause a negative perception of our Fire and Rescue Service being inadequate, I must caution them:
Such political games can have devastating consequences, resulting in the loss of life and damage to property. For this reason, I have asked our management within our service to collate all evidence and to provide this to SANParks, the custodian of the Table Mountain National Park, and then for them to open up a criminal case of arson and to launch a forensic unvestigation into these attacks.