Holding water dear
TECHNOLOGICALLY enormous strides have been made towards predicting weather patterns well into the future around the world with remarkable accuracy. It may not always be spot-on, for it is in nature’s very nature not to always keep to the script. Earth’s changing climate has been adding its own vastly new and in fact increasingly erratic dimension to its behaviour, making long-term predictions more difficult.
Still, input from satellites circling our planet and sharing of information at the press of a button by weather services from its furthest corners are giving us a better idea of what to expect than we have ever had before.
Why then, we may well ask, do we remain so utterly ill-prepared to deal with conditions such as have been brought on by the prolonged drought that has wrought so much havoc not only in South Africa but in just about every other country on the subcontinent?
The amounts said to be needed just to keep the agricultural sector relatively alive run into the billions.
How much of that will be forthcoming, we wonder. The state’s coffers are not exactly spilling over, and a bloated public service comes first. Meanwhile many commercial farmers are facing ruin, and on that follows a loss of jobs.
Spare a thought too for the countless subsistence and small farmers who have lost their entire livelihoods as crops withered and livestock starved to death.
The drought-inflicted hardship in the rural areas has the further consequence of swelling the already sizeable migratory stream to the cities. And that brings us to our own Gauteng province, with its three major metropolises facing a water crisis of potentially catastrophic proportions.
Neighbouring provinces are not beyond danger, but the point about Gauteng is that it is the industrial heart of South Africa, as it indeed is in a way of sub-Saharan Africa.
This requires it and its cities to answer to particularly high management standards.
The question that must now be asked is why the water crisis was allowed to develop to the brink of catastrophe before it was suddenly decided to impose drastic restrictions with punitive tariffs. Did political considerations come into it?
It certainly is suspicious that the announcement came after the municipal elections, when it was already known well before that that the Vaal Dam, the province’s main reservoir, was dropping to critical levels. It would be deeply disquieting if that was in fact what happened.
The experts keep telling us that we are a waterscarce country and that we are living well beyond our means.
This means we need to do our management and advance planning far better. Whoever is in charge.