No Wonderland

The other day something magical happened in South Africa:

Thousands of little fluffy things fell from the sky and covered the country under a white blanket.


You may now snub your nose and say “So what – it snowed! What’s magical about that?”

But let me tell you that most South Africans have never seen snow before. White or black, rich or poor – the majority of South African children have never built a snowman, went sledging or had a snow ball fight.


So when it snowed last week, it made the headline news!

Some areas only received very little snowfall, while others were covered under a thick blanket of snow. According to the South African Weather Service, in some areas a stunning 3cm of snow fell over night, but some daring residents claim that it may have been as much as 6cm! But no matter how much snow there was, everywhere kids built snowman, newspapers printed photos of them, and on Twitter people passed on information on where the white stuff could be found.



But while some South Africans enjoyed a walk in the winter wonderland followed by a cup of hot chocolate, for others the snow meant long delays and more hardship.


The N3 to Durban had to be closed due to heavy snowfall, and hundreds of motorist were stranded and had to spend the night in their cars.

Silly tourists associating “South” Africa with nothing but sunshine, found themselves shivering in T-Shirts and Shorts on a snow-covered Table Mountain, where temperatures never rose above 1°C.

Thousands of township dwellers were freezing in their tin houses without any form of heating or insulation.

And many homeless people were left with nothing but a fire to protect them from below zero temperatures.


But even those who are normally well adapted to cold temperatures were hit hard by the return of winter.

In the Eastern Cape, the freezing temperatures caused hundreds of fatalities among a rather unexpected group of victims:

Over 500 baby penguins froze to death in the Algoa Bay National Park in the Easter Cape and a further 300 are believed to have died near Port Elizabeth. The chicks, which were only a few weeks old, are merely covered in down feathers and unable to survive very cold and wet conditions. Rangers are on their way to rescue the endangered African Penguins, build shelters and hand out hot tea.