A decade ago, Cape Town faced Day Zero when the rains failed. Today, as Johannesburg’s taps run dry, South Africa’s premier city faces something no less destructive but infinitely more stupid because it was so avoidable: Day 5,000-plus of cynical, city-killing misrule.
Of course being South Africans we find grim humour in the wreckage, and this week the butt of most jokes was Panyaza Lesufi, who thought it was a good idea to explain to angry residents that he, too, had been inconvenienced by having to go and bath at a hotel.
I suppose you have to laugh or you’ll do yourself a mischief. Certainly as a Capetonian I can’t begin to imagine the fury of living in the richest city in Africa, dutifully paying rates and utilities bills, and not having water for three weeks as has been the case in some suburbs. Back when Cape Town got squeaky-bum close to Day Zero that rage simply wasn’t there because it’s hard to get properly angry with weather.
Of course, in the years since then the DA has gone some way to retrospectively reframing that anxious summer as a service delivery success, taking most of the credit for the rain finally returning and insisting that Cape Town was saved from disaster by the hard work of the city in imposing harsh restrictions and repairing infrastructure in record time.
Back when Cape Town got squeaky-bum close to Day Zero that rage simply wasn’t there because it’s hard to get properly angry with weather.
This is obviously political sleight of hand that somewhat denies something that all Capetonians came to understand back then: that we are naked apes who depend entirely for our survival on water falling out of the sky into small divots we’ve scratched in the surface of the earth. If the rain goes away, so do we.
I take nothing away from the officials who pulled out all the stops to mitigate for Day Zero in Cape Town back then, but, with all due respect, Capetonians weren’t praying for Helen Zille or the DA to make a new plan: they were praying for rain, because they understood the nature of the crisis.
Many residents of Johannesburg seem to understand the nature of this crisis too, which is why they are so angry. Their city is awash with water — according to the department of water and sanitation, the Vaal dam is sitting at 101.5 percent full this week, slightly down from last week’s 101.6 percent— and yet their taps are dry.
This is not an act of God. The is not the result of a once-in-a-century drought. This is simply what happens when people like Panyaza Lesufi and Dada Morero are inflicted on a city, year after year, decade after decade.
Those journalists still referring to Day Zero in the context of Johannesburg are doing the city a disservice. Day Zero is what happens when rains fail. What is happening in Johannesburg is what happens when cities fail.
Cape Town was saved because the rains returned, but there is no climatic shift that will save Johannesburg. It’s only hope is a change of government. This year. Because it won’t make it to 2029.
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