Stage two water restrictions were introduced in Joburg this week but these will only be effective if they are enforced as they were in Cape Town during their Day Zero period. (Delwyn Verasamy/M&G)
For the past month, water has flowed through the taps of Ntombentle Nelana’s home in the township of KwaNobuhle in the Eastern Cape, but she doesn’t take a drop for granted.
That’s because for several months in KwaNobuhle, which is in the drought-stricken Nelson Mandela Bay municipality, she only had water for a few hours a day.
“For six, seven months, we didn’t have water and it was very, very hard,” Nelana said. “Now, we have water, but we don’t know when it’s going to go away again … I’m scared and that’s why I’m still filling my water containers.”
Finding water was a struggle. “We had to fetch the water from the tankers and when the trucks come, they stand far away from our houses. With the JoJo tanks, it’s even worse, as they were far away. You stand in the queue for a long time, waiting for the trucks to fill the JoJo tanks … The water from the tankers was not clean and my two-year-old child got sick from that water. I only take home R800 in my job. Of that, I had to take R100 and buy water for the whole month. It was very expensive.”
Nelana had to watch her vegetable garden, filled with peppers, spinach and watermelons, wither and die. “Now, I’ve started a new garden.”
‘Water racism’
In recent months, the Nelson Mandela Bay metro, the national department of water and sanitation, local business representatives and nonprofits including Gift of the Givers, have pushed back Day Zero through a combination of interventions, including water restrictions, to prevent empty taps for about 500 000 residents, largely in the western half.
But for Siyabulela Mama, a member of the Nelson Mandela Bay water crisis committee, the city’s shortage has exposed “water racism” in the region. “There are people in Chris Hani location [in KwaNobuhle] who did not have water for six months. They would receive about 1.2 litres a day, or a week, if they’re lucky. But you have middle class areas receiving uninterrupted water.
“Many of those areas are on the western side of Port Elizabeth where the Kouga Dam and the Churchill Dam are and both are running very low. But it’s interesting that water-shedding and all these issues affect working class communities, not the other side.”
‘Not out of the woods’
Luvuyo Bangazi, the spokesperson for the metro’s water crisis joint operations committee, said the city’s dam levels have recovered from 100-day lows of about 10% to 16%. By Wednesday, the metro had 11% of usable dam storage.
“Available storage has also improved from under 4% to just shy of 10%. The available storage has really been due to the relocation of a barge at Impofu dam, a deeper location with higher yield,” he said, adding that recent rains have assisted in alleviating consumption and led to a slight rise in dam levels.
“We’re far from being out of the woods — we continue to ask citizens to reduce water consumption.”
The main thrust of pushing back Day Zero has been a combination of technical interventions and “aggressive” information sharing.
“The technical side has been spearheaded by water loss reduction, tackling over 9 000 water leaks, commissioning a key water distribution plan, Kwanobuhle multi-directional pump station and connecting supply from Nooitgedatcht to the red zone [areas classified as most at risk of running out of water] fed by the Churchill system. That system is made up of the western dams.”
Other measures include water demand management, identification of high water consumers and installing restrictors.
He said the city needs to diversify supply, consider other sources such as desalination, sustainable groundwater and smart use of surface resources.
Climate change is “for real”, he said. “We as water users need to seriously reconsider our relationship with this scarce resource. Unless we change behaviour, water shortages will forever be present either in bouts of drought or other forms of disasters. Education and awareness is key, and this requires an all of society approach, from primary school to factory floor.”
Political turmoil
Kevin Winter, of the Future Water Institute at the University of Cape Town, said the water crisis in the metro is complicated by the political turmoil that has “clouded a lot of the decision-making, the income generation, the ability to pay, the ability to make decisions a long time before these kinds of situations arise”.
Planning ahead and for a city to “take a much greater grasp of the future that is coming their way requires an enormous amount of governance, leadership and maturity”, he said. “You can’t have political infighting.
“I think it’s going to be very difficult for parties to collaborate together like this as we see unfolding in many of these municipalities and that’s a good example of just never getting anywhere, of struggling to deal with their own political issues and not making substantive decisions, which affect people’s lives and livelihoods.”
Water crisis
Nelson Odume, the director of the Unilever Centre for Environmental Water Quality in the Institute for Water Research at Rhodes University, said there are two main drivers of the water crisis in many of the country’s municipalities.
“The first is that of physical scarcity or what is referred to as primary scarcity. This is mainly related to the semi-arid nature of South Africa, in which most parts of the country are prone to drought due to low average rainfall and rainfall patterns that are unevenly distributed.
“This is the primary cause of the drought experienced in most parts of the country — in Cape Town in 2015 to 2017 and currently in Nelson Mandela Bay. Because South Africa currently over-relies on surface water, during drought periods, the dams are prone to dry up.”
The second cause, and “perhaps the most serious”, is human-made, referred to as economic or secondary scarcity. This includes political and administrative instability in municipalities.
Odume points to a study this year that demonstrated the “toxic effects” of party politics on the stability of the Nelson Mandela Bay metro.
“The implication of this is that municipal activities came to near a complete stop while politicians, and their managerial proxies embarked on battles for survival. This has amplified the consequences of the drought situation or water crisis as decisions that are made are left unimplemented in many instances.”
Scarce water
Another problem is the slow pace of diversifying the country’s water sources.
“More than 70% of water consumed in South Africa is surface water, yet our surface water resources are already oversubscribed,” Odume said. “There has been a very slow pace of diversifying to alternative water sources such as exploiting groundwater and treating and recycling grey and wastewater.”
In many municipalities, non-revenue water remains a big problem. “This is water that is produced but does not get to the final consumer due to losses along the distribution network or elsewhere. The average currently stands at about 41% in South Africa. Physical losses stand at 35% compared to global best practice of about 15%.”
Odume said many municipalities are unable to efficiently manage water consumption in their regions. It also would appear that there is a focus on developing new infrastructure instead of fixing existing infrastructure.
“Too many water and wastewater treatment works are in a state of disrepair because they are not properly maintained,” he said. “Many of our surface water sources are experiencing serious pollution, particularly from failing municipal wastewater treatment works.”
South Africa’s water problems are complex and pervasive, according to Odume. “With the exception of a few metro and municipalities, water problems are being experienced in one form or the other throughout the country. The risks are enormous, ranging from human health, to the economy. Many industries in the country rely on water as one of their input materials for production. So, water insecurity can have serious consequences for economic and social stability, as well as the sustainability of our vital ecosystems.”
‘We can’t drink strategies’
The department of water and sanitation recently released its draft National Water Resource Strategy III (NWRS-3), which has been approved by the cabinet for public consultation.
Anja Du Plessis, an associate professor in the department of geography at Unisa, welcomed the updated and revised strategy. “The strategy gives a good summary of some of the primary successes of NWRS 2 as well as the main challenges which need to be addressed. Unfortunately, the country’s major water challenges have mostly remained the same and have intensified …
“We have to take proper informed actions now to address major water challenges, the further collapse of water infrastructure, wastewater treatment works and water and sanitation service delivery to ultimately avoid major water insecurity.”
Mariette Liefferink, of the water and sanitation leadership group and its sustainable development goal six task team, agreed. “The NWRS-3 will advise the actions in the next National Water and Sanitation Master Plan. Most of the actions, however, in the current Master Plan failed to be implemented within the scheduled time periods. After all, we cannot drink plans and strategies.”
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