Water: a permanent crisis

AS PRIMARY school learners in the 1970s we were taught that South Africa does not have enough water; that we are a water-scarce country. We have always been told not to waste water.

But it seems that the politicians and people in charge of water supply have been living in another country. They seem to have been living in a country where the warnings about water shortages could be shrugged off. They’ve been living in a country where every drop of rain that falls lulls overconfident bureaucrats into complacency that the crisis has been averted for now and they can, once again, sidetrack water contingency projects.

About two years ago, the City of Cape Town told residents to cut down on water usage. Many of us have been doing exactly that. In my household, consisting of three people, we have more than halved our usage and now have a water bill of less than R100 a month.

When the bureaucrats issued their request for people to use less water, they should have contemplated that their income from water would subsequently also decline. It now seems that the City of Cape Town did not foresee this and was unprepared for the drop in income.

Now, in an attempt to supplement their budget, they want to punish us – the people who have complied to their request to be prudent in the use of water – by making us pay for the water we are not using.

For anyone watching, this event and its denouement provide a graphic demonstration of the devastating effects of procrastination.

We hope that this year we will have good rains. But then again, if good rains fell, it would once again diminish the urgency with which this city – but more, this country – needs to, once and for all, start looking for real solutions to the reality. For that’s what it is: an ever-present reality, not a once-in-a-while crisis – of surviving in semi-arid conditions. ALDA VAN ZYL Sea Point