See pages 4, 5, 22, 23 & 24

berg, mayoral committee member for water, were then dispatched as the city’s talking heads.

But then within days Premier Helen Zille took the reins, speaking out on the need to prepare for Day Zero.

Then party leader Mmusi Maimane rolled into town and attracted some criticism after he weighed-in on the crisis.

Western Cape DA leader Bonginkosi Madikizela yesterday defended the party’s decision to seek Maimane’s help.

“It shows that the DA is taking charge to make sure our government doesn’t disappoint the people who put faith in us. That is what a leader does,” he said.

“If Cape Town runs out of water, the DA will take accountability. People will blame the DA.”

He said Limberg and Neilson would still be “dealing with the administration of this” crisis.

“Mmusi is taking charge as the political leader of the DA.

“You don’t have to live in Cape Town to know what is happening in the city. Mmusi is the national leader and it is his responsibility to know what is happening in all DA governments.”

Asked why Maimane had handed out water buckets to locals who could afford to buy their own, Madikizela said this was “symbolic”.

“People miss the context. Mmusi was saying you can afford to buy buckets but you are still wasting water. It was a symbolic act to say use these buckets,” he said.

Zille faced another dilemma yesterday afternoon when the South African Weather Service (SAWS) claimed she had been “disingenuous and extremely opportunistic” in her comments about weather predictions.

This was in response to the London-based website The South African which had reported that Zille had said the weather services “have said to me their models don’t work anymore, in an era of climate change”.

In fact, the website had misquoted Zille’s comments made on the TV show, BBC Newsnight.

Zille had, in fact, said climate change was affecting weather predictions.

She took to Twitter last night to defend herself with visual evidence the weather services had given her.

“This is one of the worrying slides the SA Weather Service showed us in an open and honest briefing about what rainfall to expect in the run-up to Day Zero,” said Zille.

“Where the map is white, they cannot predict. They said: Climate change has destroyed predictability of old forecasting models.”

Zille told Weekend Argus last night: “It is no negative reflection on them that they can’t predict. That is what climate change is doing to the science of forecasting.

“It is a reflection on climate change, not SAWS. Pity I was misreported and pity they reacted.”

She would not comment on some of her water tweets that were criticised for being insensitive towards people without access to water (see page 5).

Madikizela responded, though, after seeing Zille’s tweets: “I’ve read this several times, which part is a problem for you?”