Cape Town can win support for water cuts
DAMS in Cape Town are at half the level they were this time last year as the city continues to battle drought. Last year’s shortage gave the city the driest summer in 100 years. Unless Cape Town has a miraculously wet spring, the summer of 2018 seems set to achieve some unfortunate new records.
Slowing down residential water use is obviously hugely important – residents consume 65% of the city’s water. But to get residents to use less, the city’s management must get residents’ buy-in. This can only be achieved if there is trust and trust will only be developed when residents believe that the water authority is handling restrictions in a way that is necessary, effective and fair.
Australian researchers studying household water use found people’s willingness to save water relates directly to the trust they feel in the local authority promoting water savings. The researchers also drew on a Mexican case study which found that residents who trusted the local authority in a town called Sonora during an eight-year drought were much more likely to save water.
These and other studies show that trust is built when restrictions are equal to the severity of the drought, when no one gets away with wasting water and when there is no favouritism towards certain sectors or users.
To build trust, the public needs to believe that restrictions are necessary: people must believe the appropriate restrictions have been introduced at the correct time.
Queensland, Australia, for example, ran a campaign called “Target 140” during its worst drought in 100 years. The aim of the campaign was to reduce water use to 140 litres per person per day. One of the greatest hindrances was that people had already endured two years of water restrictions. So they felt despondent that their best water-saving efforts hadn’t been good enough and were reluctant to save even more.
But the campaign became a success after the Queensland water commission began showing residents how dam levels were dropping. It was able to convince customers that intensified water restrictions were absolutely necessary.
Residents can lose interest in conserving water if they believe that others are getting away with wasting water. A study on water restriction effectiveness in Los Angeles found hardly any water was saved when water restrictions were not enforced. People need to know water restrictions will be effective.
Customers must trust that restrictions are applied appropriately to all water users. Case studies show that one of the most common complaints by residents is that others – particular groups or other residents – are the real water wasters. Queensland’s Target 140 Campaign managed to convince customers that severe restrictions on the residential sector, which used 70% of the water, were fair. Reassuring residents of the fairness of restrictions is vital to sustain buy-in.
The City of Cape Town has done a good job in covering the bases when it comes to explaining water restrictions in terms of their necessity and their effectiveness. But it hasn’t done that well in explaining that water restrictions are being done fairly.
On the positive end of the scale, the city has done a good job in demonstrating that those who waste water are held accountable. This has been achieved through the naming and shaming of top water users. And water management devices were installed on private properties that hadn’t curtailed excessive use.
But on fairness, the city has only sporadically communicated the breakdown of water distribution from the 14 dams that supply its water. It’s rarely shown the breakdown of water use per sector and scant mention has been made of restrictions placed on other sectors.
Cape Town is emulating some of the best elements of a save-water campaign. Its water saving target is close on half of Queensland’s, which was considered one of the most water-efficient communities in the Western world.
If Cape Town wants to beat Queensland’s target, it needs to spend the spring season convincing the public that restrictions are applied appropriately for all water users.
This means changing tack in its messaging. Up until now the dominant message has been aimed at convincing the public that restrictions are necessary and effective. Now it’s time to show that restrictions are fair.
This means showing exactly how water is allocated in the region, breaking down the distribution of water to various sectors and demonstrating that non-residential sectors are also carrying their responsibility. This information is already in the public domain, but it needs greater emphasis.
A chain is as strong as its weakest link. Building trust, and getting the public to buy in to severely reduced water use over 2018 will be best achieved if the city can communicate the fairness of restrictions to fortify an otherwise robust campaign. – The Conversation
Olivier is a post-doctoral research fellow at the Global Change Institute, Wits University
IT IS a little over two months until the ANC’s 54th national conference scheduled for December 16-20 at Gallagher Estate in Gauteng.
The centrality and credibility of ANC branches will be tested during this period.
Whatever ANC members do henceforth until the official opening of the conference must be about safeguarding the power of branches.
Members and leaders operating daily in branches must never allow anyone or anything to usurp political and constitutional powers wielded by the branches.
This could help a great deal to begin uprooting negative tendencies besieging branches.
These negative tendencies include widespread factionalism, gate-keeping, manipulation of branch membership data and isolation of good leaders and seasoned activists within branches.
The NWC report to the NEC in October last year, highlighted all these issues after the ANC suffered serious setbacks in various urban centres of the country in the 2016 local government elections.
A decision was then taken that we needed to do things differently if we were to restore the image of the ANC and win back the lost support.
The collective duty of members and leaders generally, and those of us actively campaigning particularly, is to ensure that ANC branches are allowed conducive spaces to conduct productive policy engagements, fairly nominate delegates and fearlessly nominate names for the new national executive committee to be ultimately elected during the conference.
The outcomes of these and related tasks must be credible.
The focus must be on safeguarding the centrality and credibility of ANC branch processes currently under way. This is critical for the success of the 54th national conference. ANC conferences must always be understood as a culmination of extensive democratic processes.
There must still be constructive policy debates and views expressed on leadership preferences without fear or favour. Similarly, there must still be a strong ANC beyond the 54th national conference.
There is research evidence to support the notion that leadership contests contribute more negatively than all other diagnosed organisational challenges, including resulting in deeply divided branches before and during conferences across all organisation levels.
We must always remember that an ANC branch is the basic unit of the organisation where people regularly converge to forge unity and deal with social, political and economic issues affecting them.
All of us as ANC members must always carry the utmost political responsibility to strengthen our branches and ensure that the ANC is rooted among the people and is seen as leading societal change.
This responsibility to strengthen branches must supersede all other things, including how members and leaders engage and resolve broad policy and leadership preferences throughout this period leading up to the conference.
The ANC constitution clearly states that the leadership of the party is accountable to members; not the other way around. All of us owe our allegiance to the ANC, its constitution and policy positions, not individual leaders.
ANC members and leaders must resist anything that threatens to destroy their branches, because there will be no ANC without branches. The preoccupation of ANC branches should be to listen and attend to all issues of our people where they are. Therefore, destroying any ANC branch is tantamount to destroying the hope and instrument of liberation in the hands of our people.
ANC branches are seized with the interrelated difficult tasks of crystallising policy proposals arising from the national policy conference held in June, and divided branches will certainly find it difficult to ventilate and achieve these important tasks.
It is therefore increasingly necessary to reflect objectively on the state of our branches including whether or not campaigning members and leaders are doing enough to safeguard the centrality and credibility of branches to enable them to discharge their basic constitutional roles and responsibilities.
Any such reflection on what must be done to safeguard, strengthen and unify ANC branches could be meaningful if anchored in the foundational ideals elaborated on in the Freedom Charter and through the eye of the needle.
Branch members and leaders must internalise and unite around these key documents.
It is disheartening to see ANC branches being weakened to the extent that they are compromised and virtually giving up their power to decide policy and elect leaders. Whatever all of us do must not destroy ANC branches. We must continue to value our belonging in the ANC, also humbly respect public offices we occupy, and appreciate the privilege of leading.
Yes, we must lobby and allow ourselves to be persuaded, but we have a duty to safeguard the branch as the basic unit and home of local people. The road to the much anticipated ANC’s 54th national conference must be about members and leaders renewing and not destroying branches.
We owe it to Oliver Tambo, who would be turning 100 on October 27, to strengthen our movement whatever our differences.
Tambo correctly observed in his political report to the 48th National Conference in 1991 in Natal that “even as we provided leadership, we were always conscious of the fact that the ANC was the people’s parliament”.
This consciousness and understanding that the movement was created to serve our people, not ourselves, is very important to all of us.
Mbete is ANC’s national chairperson.