Day Zero - new normal for governments in Africa?

‘Day Zero’ and the possibility of it taking place was bound to bring up many questions, some of which remain unanswered. However, the main question will be why such an event was so close to taking place and what must be done so the possibility of it actually happening in the future can be avoided. 

Since droughts ravaged the country a woman in Cape Town has started collecting rainwater to fill her swimming pool rather than relying on the state's water supply

It’s easy to blame climate change for environmental consequences such as droughts and the reality of regular outbreaks of water crisis. However, in the case of 'Day Zero' climate change was not entirely to blame and it was actually the failure of local officials and the government as a whole for refusing to take responsibility to plan and mitigate for such droughts when the resources for doing so was widely available. This short film by the Cape Town Drought Response Learning Initiative highlights how this was a ‘governance crisis’ and that was the root cause for exacerbating the droughts. There’s also evidence to suggest if the government had effectively managed the drought in the early stages, there would have been enough time for dams to replenish their water supplies by winter 2017 and the impending doom of a ‘Day Zero’ would have been avoided altogether. Again, there is the issue of who is ultimately in charge of bringing restrictions and tariffs in, what works best is when local government officials are tasked with being solely responsible for bringing such measures in for their own districts, because national governments have to act in the interests of all and cannot bring national measures for everyone when such policies may not be needed for some people. However, other problems arise when local governments are accountable for bringing such procedures, as many suffer from a reduction in grants and subsidies (Millington and Scheba, 2020). 

In the end the usual games and agendas to score political points will need to be put aside as it’s everyone that loses out when such environmental crises take place. The likelihood for such extreme events has already been predicted to be a more common occurrence by the end of the century, as South Africa’s reliance on rainwater becomes more and more doubtful with unpredictable and decreasing rainfall being fuelled by global warming (Tucker, 2020). There are already talks of another possible ‘Day Zero’ in another South African city, the KwaZulu-Natal province. Back in 2019, many residents in Durban had to rely on tanker trucks for their water supply after the municipal water was cut off, and existing ones regularly suffered from theft and illegal networks this alongside most of their water sources drying up, ‘Day Zero’ is again inevitable in the not so distant future for several South African cities (Heggie, 2020).  If anything, 'Day Zero' should be taken as a lesson to understand what the future is going to look like and better prepare for averting such disasters. So solutions and measures will have to be considered quickly to avoid any similar situation not only in Africa but in all dryland regions of the world. 

People waiting to collect drinking water from water tanks in the Wesern Cape Province of South Africa 

For South Africa in particular, 'Day Zero' was just the tip of the iceberg, the problem of water scarcity and the causes for such issues varies across different regions, not only because of climate change-induced droughts but also because of a growing population demanding more water, poor infrastructures in place and the overexploitation and use of existing water supplies (Heggie, 2020). This was not a one-off problem that most politicians thought it was going to be. For these water issues to be effectively managed and solved a combination of solutions will need to be done, one, governments will need to invest in proper infrastructures, two, realise that policies need to involve local knowledge of rural communities and three, for people to do their part in not overusing water needlessly and come to terms that water needs to be equally accessible to all for a sustainable future that works for the benefit of everyone. 

I hope my blogposts have looked at the different topics related to politics and water through various case studies. I have enjoyed learning about the complicated issues related to water, through transboundary surface water and aquifers, floodplains in Nigeria and finally looking at the implications of ‘Day Zero’ in Cape Town. Water should be a basic fundamental human right to every person in the world and I think through the involvement of various actors, management of water supplies can be effectively achieved, and water security can be guaranteed to all in Africa. Thank you for reading my posts and I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did writing it!