Cape Town drought leaves behind a deeper thirst

“I will never again trust a word they say,” says writer Helen Moffett. By “they”, she means the Democratic Alliance-led municipality governing South Africa’s second most populous metropolitan area.

Ms Moffett is the author of 101 Water Wise Ways, a book targeted at Cape Town’s wasteful elites. Like many Capetonians, she is livid over how the local authorities and the African National Congress-led federal government handled “Day Zero”, the day taps were set to run dry.

She accuses the DA of poor planning, scaremongering to cover failures and even dragging its feet to erode the support of its political rival — claims denied by the party.

Ms Moffett recalls the panic triggered by outgoing mayor Patricia de Lille’s January announcement that Day Zero was a guaranteed 90 days away. “It was a slap in the face,” she says. “Here we all were, pulling together to share water and reduce usage. Then along comes the mayor with punitive tariffs, claiming that 60 per cent of us are ‘callously’ exceeding the limit [of 87 litres per day].” Research by data journalist Jason Norwood-Young suggested the number was actually about 12-16 per cent.

Dam levels have now risen and Day Zero has been pushed back to 2019, and could be averted entirely.

But the higher water charges that came with Ms de Lille’s restrictions limiting residential use to 50 litres per person per day remain. Dam levels are still below the 85 per cent level required by government for restrictions to be lifted.

What happens when citizens lose faith in their government’s ability to provide a basic service such as water? Research suggests the answer is “insurgent citizenship”. Coined by anthropologist James Holston, the term has been used by South African commentators to describe the often incendiary protests in the country’s poor black townships and informal settlements against the failures of the state to provide access to housing, education and sanitation. These are rights enshrined in South Africa’s constitution.

When it comes to Day Zero, many “insurgents” are middle class professionals, such as physiotherapist Riyaz Rawoot. A resident of the majority-white, affluent suburb of Claremont, Mr Rawoot used his own tubing and pipes in 2017 to turn a spring in the neighbouring posh suburb of Newlands into a water-collection point. The spring made it easier, at a time when people needed it most, to access water that previously ran from the famous Table Mountain into the icy Atlantic.

Hundreds flocked daily to the improvised watering hole. They crossed the boundaries of class and race that remain etched in the city a quarter of a century after the formal end of apartheid.

The spring was a place where residents from all walks of life could commune, says Steven Robins, a friend of Mr Rawoot. Fewer than a third of South Africans frequently socialise across racial lines. Prof Robins, who works in the sociology department at Stellenbosch University, attributes the popularity of Mr Rawoot’s water-collection point to its history and location. Many who came to the spring were from black families forcibly removed from the area when it was declared “whites only” under the apartheid system.

Prof Robins says the spring became a tangible project of reclamation and even reconciliation. But Mr Rawoot had to close it in May, by order of the municipal authorities, and the water was diverted to a nearby site under the state’s control.

Anger at the municipality still simmers, voiced in community meetings, where activists threaten to mobilise the poor, working class and the increasingly disenchanted middle class against the DA ahead of next year’s national and provincial elections. In the boardroom of his sixth-floor office, Ian Neilson, deputy mayor and DA member, concedes that the lower middle class felt the pinch of the water crisis most. But it is the national government that sets water restrictions, he insists. He says his office has been trying without success to meet Gugile Nkwinti, the national minister of water and sanitation, in the hopes of having restrictions lifted before the dam levels reach 85 per cent.

A spokesperson for Mr Nkwinti replies that the national department only sets the targets for dam levels. It is up to municipalities to decide how to reach the targets, he adds, such as setting water-use restrictions.

Different levels of government pointing the finger at each other have chipped away at trust in the state, says Ms Moffett. Rejecting the government’s claim that it did not expect the crisis, she points to a newspaper clipping from 1990, where the country’s Water Research Commission said the area could, without new sources, run out of water in 17 years.

Mr Neilson says the state responded to the WRC’s warning by building the Berg River Dam, completed in 2009, and that the recent drought could not have been predicted. Yet the 2007 Western Cape Water Reconciliation Strategy estimated that, despite the dam, additional water sources would be needed after 2011 to avoid a shortage.

The water crisis spurred the formation of new activist organisations such as the Water Crisis Coalition. Formed by trade unionists, the group accuses the city of using Day Zero to pass anti-poor policies and privatise the water sector. Indeed, the three temporary desalination plants that are meant to tide things over until permanent plants are built are operated by private companies.

The coalition supported Mr Rawoot’s efforts to keep the water-collection point he built open, suggesting the pockets of rage and resistance may be converging. If so, the Cape of Storms’ fiercest squall may yet be ahead.

This article has been updated to correct a typo in the estimate of those exceeding the water limit