As Black Friday Approaches

Tanya Talaga delivered this year's CBC Massey Lectures. Ms. Talaga is an Anishinaabe Canadian journalist and the author of Seven Fallen Feathers. That book is available from House of Anansi Press as are the Massey Lectures, which are entitled All Our Relations: Finding the Path Forward. As a white, male of a certain age, there is a tendency to lump me into a category of 'identity' not of my own choosing that seeks to place me at a great distance from a person such as Ms. Talaga, who, on the broadest criteria - First Nations female person - is nothing like me. However obviously true this may be, one balks at attempt to draw any meaningful conclusions from this regarding values, interests, and so on. Indeed, my argument here is that such categorizations (and the ill-informed conclusions drawn from them) are particularly unhelpful at a time when what we in this world need more than anything is, as she says, a way forward together. The world is madly spinning off in all directions, and by 'world', I mean the world that is comprised of sovereign states. This sovereign notion, around for about 370 years, since the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, allows for limited collective identity and maximum inter-collective competition. That's a very long story to tell, but the quick take away is that we humans are not very good at seeing beyond the visible difference toward the shared values. Indeed, we too often impute different values based on what we see. In terms of Western and 'white', the contrast with indigenous and 'red' has been hammered into stone like some sort of Ten Commandments. Holding the chisel have been state-makers (Sir John A. Macdonald and Thomas Jefferson come to mind), capitalists of every sort, particularly those most interested in land and resources, the Christian churches, and those in command of the printed word and the moving image. And where there are state makers and capitalists, there are also lawyers, the rule of law, legislation and all manner of formalized mechanisms to codify difference and justify exploitation and marginalization. State making is boundary making in a system where the legal basis for the boundary derives from the demonstrated capacity to uphold the rules you have written. Put simply: might makes right. The construction of Canada, Mexico and the United States would not have been possible without the appropriation of all of the best lands from those who were here first.



As Tanya Talaga tells us, despite the most concerted deliberate (from annihilation to assimilation) and accidental (small pox) attempts to eliminate the 'Indian problem', First Nations peoples are still here and plan to stay here. Formal (meaning Canadian state-directed) processes are underway to explore the ways and means of reconciliation. Spurred on by the reprehensible practice of residential schools, Canada's Truth and Reconciliation Commission seems to me to be on an honorable, important and admirable mission. The rise of identity politics has provided space for social movements such as Idle No More and civil society organizations such as Reconciliation Canada to press for fundamental changes in the way First Nations are treated vis a vis what we might call 'the rest of Canada'. What is most interesting and important about these indigenous peoples' led groups and organizations is the framing of the mission. Whereas identity politics tends to divide and sub-divide, First Nations social movements set their mission within the broader context of 'Mother Earth' and of 'all peoples', so being integrative rather than disintegrative, aligning group interests with primary planetary concerns of social justice and environmental sustainability.


In my view, this offers us an opening toward not merely reconciliation but toward a different way of seeing self in relation to other. What I mean is, indigenous peoples' everywhere offer us insights into sustainable, adaptable, resilient and multivariate ways of being in the world. 'Modern' 'Western' society has demonized and derided as 'backward' not only these ways of thinking and acting but also those aspects of our own cultures and histories that smell of 'pre-modernity'. This binary not only undermines those not like us by saying we moderns are better, but, more importantly, it places our modern ways beyond scrutiny, beyond level-headed critique. As we rush from one sexy concept (e.g. innovation) to another (e.g. the gig economy), we would do well to remember that we cannot 'technologize' our way out of the disastrous and unsustainable corner into which we have painted ourselves. We cannot solve our most pressing problems (e.g. climate change) with the same tools, methods and ways of thinking that have created the problems in the first place. Just as 'more guns' will not put an end to 'gun violence', so too 'more technology' will not put an end to high mass consumption, inequitable distribution, over-production, ecosystem destruction, social dislocation, etc etc. So, what is to be done? Dare to be different.



In daring to be different, I am saying that, first of all, we must abandon the destructive binaries -- traditional/modern, backward/forward, superstitious/scientific, savage/civilized -- that not only divide us but paralyze us, inhibiting our ability to see, think and act differently. We moderns are wedded to the notion that 'development' equates to the transformation of the Earth in line with our dreams, whatever they may be. It means living apart from Nature, not within it. So when indigenous groups argue in support of 'Mother Earth', too many of us 'moderns' hear something that sounds traditional, backward, superstitious and savage. If that's how you interpret what you hear when an Indigenous group or person invokes the value of respecting Mother Earth, then it means that you aren't really listening. In daring to be different we must learn to listen and dare to question often very firmly held beliefs.



Let's be clear: there is no 'going back'. In fact, there is no such thing as 'going back', just as there is no such thing as 'going forward'. As we stand at the precipice of calamitous anthropogenic change, as we survey the disastrous social, economic, environmental and political realities of the modern world, who in their right mind would call this 'progress'? To be sure, today is different than it was yesterday and yesterday different from the day before. Millions live long and well; and millions more do not. Many of us have seen the Hans Rosling Ted Talk on global development. Without out doubt, it is compelling and full of hope. But aggregate data conceals as much as it reveals. If we juxtapose Rosling's take on development with Al Gore's data on climate or look at data tables regarding biodiversity loss or deforestation over time, or the decline of the middle class, the rise of the one percent and incidences of heart disease, obesity and diabetes in 'wealthy' countries, then we get a better sense of not only the benefits but of the (short term and long term) costs. Modernity as currently conceptualized is testing Earth system limits. Can we shift the cost:benefit ratio in favour of benefits? Can we do so by challenging the tropes of development, especially continuous growth and consumption? I think we can. Today is different than yesterday. It may be better by some measures and worse by others, but it is certainly not 'progress'. In daring to be different, we must dare to challenge conventional wisdom. As Timothy Leary once said, 'think for yourself and question authority'.



Mi'kmaw Elder Albert Marshall has developed the idea of two-eyed seeing as a viable way of reconciling indigenous 'traditional' knowledge with Western 'scientific' knowledge. I put great value in these insights. Western science is overwhelmingly about understanding first principles in order to bend systems to human needs and interests (think: Man over Nature). Such an approach acknowledges no limits. Indigenous knowledge is overwhelmingly about understanding the dynamics of earth systems in order to live in balance with them (think: humans as part of the ecosystem). Such an approach acknowledges and respects limits. Neither approach exists in perfect form, as there is a great deal of cross fertilization. Is this perhaps a way forward together? Toward not just reconciliation but respect? Western approaches to development are leading toward uniformity: of diets, of human settlement design, of socio-cultural practices. In contrast, Earth systems are simultaneously dynamic and stable -- constant change in highly predictable patterns -- where stability depends on diversity: change will bend but not break the system. As we hurtle toward Earth system tipping points due to our own hubris, is it not time to ask some simple questions: Why should everyone everywhere get their starch from only wheat and rice? Is incessant consumption the meaning of life? Rather than force indigenous peoples everywhere into pre-modern or underdevelopment narrative boxes, I think it is time we seek their advice for living within the limits set by the system; and to approach them as Elders who have much to teach us arrogant youths. In daring to be different, I think we must dare to think that if there must be binary ways of understanding, then quite possibly we've got the binaries the wrong way round.



Progress is a myth. There is then and there is now. There are challenges that we face every day that we wish to overcome. We must embrace the challenge but set it within a different narrative, a narrative of sustainability divorced from the unhelpful binary of developed and developing. The former suggests an end point; the latter a process. Together they suggest separation - one is finished with their project; the other's project is ongoing - and hierarchy, where the former will help the latter, each the author of her/his own fortune. But we are connected at every point and our life courses are mutually constituted. The challenges faced by First Nations peoples in Canada are not of their own making. They are an outcome of an historical process founded on the myth of 'progress' served up in support of narrowly conceived social and political ends. Those founding myths are part of the larger problem of modernity's dead end. It is therefore natural, in my view, that First Nations and Indigenous Peoples social movements align their interests around concern for local ecosystems sustainability and planetary tipping points. In daring to be different, we must dare to abandon the persistent myths of modernity and progress and embrace the ideas of system stability, resilience, and limits to growth. This would mean a broad shift in values, seeing 'less' as 'more', and 'more' as rightly questionable. As Black Friday approaches, let's dare to be different. Pointless consumption will be the death of us all.

Hello #WaterWars, Bye Bye #DayZero

Hello #WaterWars, Bye Bye #DayZero, Where have you gone #ClimateChaos old friend?

As doyens of the water world meet in Brasilia this week in their biannual reflection on the state of the planet’s most precious resource, I wish to reflect on the perceived value and harm attached to alarmism and hyperbole as tools of motivation for human action. Why over-statement is popular is not a puzzle: people gravitate to the ‘man bites dog’ form of headline. Why negativity in reporting and possibly also in scholarship generally triumphs – in terms of revenue, clicks, retweets, research funding and policy pronouncements – is also not a puzzle: humans depend on certainty and predictability for their security, so the prospect of dramatic change due to some ill-advised action or inaction tends to grab our attention. Put differently, we take our successes for granted. That most people on the planet sleep soundly in their beds – be they on bare earth, straw or down-filled luxury mattress – is just not interesting to us humans. Ours is a dangerous world, so we are built for fight or flight, always on the look out for the poisonous snake, the spider, the shark. We are genetically predisposed to gravitate to stories of impending doom. A bigger puzzle pertains to why some claims that ‘the sky is falling’ drive us to action, while some others do not. In a previous blog, I ruminated on the reasons why it was so difficult to get ‘us’ to act in a concerted and collective fashion on climate change. In brief, what I said there was that two of the most important factors mitigating against concerted action are: (1) people are differently impacted with some even benefiting from the general impacts (and possibly profiting from the negative impacts); and (2) the time horizons for the world’s climate #dayzero differ considerably with decision-makers’ (re)election cycles.

Recently, we have seen the reemergence of the #WaterWars discourse in state houses and think tanks around the world. One presumes that the motive behind such alarmism is to challenge world leaders to take action in order to avoid such hypothesized wars. In 1995, then-World Bank vice-president Ismael Serageldin famously stated that if the wars of the 20^th century were over oil, those of the 21^st would be over water if appropriate measures to avoid such outcomes were not taken. Being Egyptian, one can infer a primary target of his remarks to be the riparian states that share the Nile River Basin, but make no mistake: they were intended to be heard around the world. There have been two principle outcomes of this pronouncement in the intervening 23 years: one, there has been a great deal done in the service of water for peace by states, civil societies and private sector actors. Some of this was new, but much had been on-going, predating Serageldin's statement. Two, there have been a great many commentators who have ignored the latter part of his statement (the call to action), the outcomes relating to that call to action, and who have instead spilled a great deal of ink forecasting water’s existing and coming central role in (inter-state) violent conflict. One would be right to suspect that the latest iteration of the water wars narrative is designed to push influential state and private sector actors toward recognition of water’s key place in shaping the world’s climate, as well as its central role in economic production especially energy and food production. Hence, the World Economic Forum consistently announces water to be one of the top five risk factors to global peace and security, while pressing for policies and practices concerning the so-called WEF-Nexus (Water-energy-food and climate security nexus).

Choosing the high-road of charitable interpretation, one would see these as noble and laudable attempts to shift the world’s major water uses toward integrated, efficient and sustainable practices. However, it is equally important, it seems to me, to point out that sounding the alarm about water wars not only ignores the facts of widespread inter-state cooperation (so doing a disservice to all those engaged in fostering cooperation on water resources for peaceful outcomes), but simultaneously gains the attention of the wrong audience (those tasked with preparing and making war, i.e. the military) while distracting us from the greatest challenge related to water, that of ensuring adequate amounts and qualities of water for the world’s poor. To the world’s poor, water is not only life but too often it is the source of death, e.g. through vector borne disease, drought and flood. Since those with the guns and the money also have all the water they need, the alarmism surrounding a coming war over water, falls mostly on deaf ears. As research by Aaron Wolf and his colleagues at the University of Oregon shows, the rich fight and cooperate over water all the time. Shooting wars, where militaries are mobilized and deployed, are a fiction of the imagination. To be sure, violent conflict exists, but mostly at the hyper-local level and usually in an unusually extended period of drought. At the same time, the spectre of a water war between states inevitably sucks up financial resources, human capacity and time -- all of which is better used in the service of Water, Sanitation, Health and Education (WASHE) programs everywhere in the world.

In stark contrast, regular water shortages among the world’s poor and marginalized are a daily reality yet this segment of global society is too lightly regarded by policy makers everywhere, from Canada and the United States (in relation to First Nations people) to large swaths of the global South – from Brazil to Botswana – where indigenous people are still regarded as ‘backward’.  Where is mobilization in support of their struggles? As Vandana Shiva has pointed out, this is tantamount to a water war of the rich against the poor, one lately manifest as water-grabs and land-grabs not only in Brazil, Indonesia, Ethiopia and Mozambique, but along the shores of North America's Great Lakes, all in service of multinational capital and justified in terms of 'jobs' and 'economic development'.

Which brings me to #DayZero and the #CapeTown water crisis. I have also recently written about this particular water crisis and it strikes me as a fundamental mistake that the government of the Western Cape and the municipality of Cape Town have abandoned their #DayZero campaigning. This campaign was designed to mobilize the greater metropolis’s nearly 4 million people in a grand water saving scheme so that they might stave off the day when the city would not be able to supply any water due to low levels in the networked system of dams and one groundwater aquifer. The Western Cape has suffered an on-going drought which appears to have finally broken. Some early rains suggest that things may be back to ‘normal’, though one should point out that both drought and flood are normal - something that people seem to always forget once the rains have come, or the floodwaters have receded. The city made several announcements pushing back day zero, from April to June to August, and has recently announced that it has ‘defeated day zero’, at least for this year. Thus, the decision was taken to abandon the #DayZero hash-tag and pronouncements as it had resulted in a loss of business investment and tourism renevue. This, to me, is a mistake.

Let’s review: in the case of climate change, impacts are highly unevenly felt across society and major negative impacts seem to be on some far horizon. In the case of impending water wars between states, well, there is just no evidence in support of such a proposition. Day zero is very different. People of all walks of life occupy the greater metropolitan area. Dam levels have been dropping and are empirically verifiable. Legitimate projections can then be made stating for a fact the date when the city could no longer supply an essential service. In addition, examples of other cases, such as Barcelona, offered not only evidence of collapse but also effective measures to be taken to address the issue. Make no mistake, Cape Town is an unequal society. People are differently empowered socially, economically and politically. Millions have long suffered chronic water scarcity and insecurity across the greater metropolitan landscape even when the dams were full. And plenty of people are profiting – politically and economically – from the crisis. So, what’s the important difference with the other two alarmist approaches to mobilization? There are three:

1.     

•   Everyone, from the rich to the poor, are negatively affected
• The challenge is empirically verifiable with a demonstrable date of impact
• There is emprical evidence of methods to be taken to successfully delay or avert the disaster, and these methods vary from the most basic (grey water reuse) to the most complex (desalination plants)

It is not easy to get fractured and fragmented societies to pull together, or, perhaps more accurately stated, to pull in the same direction so instilling a feeling of common purpose and the building of social capital. When intense storms hit some few weeks ago, there was a palpable sense of relief among Capetonians. While the rains did not mark the end of the drought or an end to the challenge, they did provide residents with a feeling of hope that collective effort would be rewarded. The efforts taken empowered citizens. Rather than succumb to fatalism, they could help themselves and reap the rewards. Longer term solutions will require technology, capital and human resources, so alerting residents that individual efforts do add up, but will have to take different forms through time. In my view, this is a successful first step among many that must be taken to ensure water security for the city, the metropolitan area and the region. Capetonians need to see that #DayZero is still somewhere on the near horizon, that it has not magically vanished to never come again. As stated earlier, drought and flood are extreme but normal events. Climate change is hypothesized to make these more frequent and more intense. There is a saying in the water policy world: a drought is a terrible thing to waste. Capetonians have not wasted their drought. They have taken action and proven to themselves that despite their myriad differences they are capable of banding together in common purpose. The #DayZero campaign, it seems to me, should be thanked for both enabling and proving that a specific sort of crisis can mobilize people for positive outcomes.

I am not convinced that such a campaign can work with either climate change or poor water use practices for the reasons stated above. But the three bullet points above should provide some food for thought about what it takes – short of war and short of climate catastrophe – to get us to do the right thing.   

Reflections on the Cape Town Water Crisis

REFLECTIONS ON DAY ZERO

Larry Swatuk

The city of Cape Town, South Africa faces an imminent threat due to prolonged drought. The drought has been so severe that the city faces the prospect of what it calls ‘Day Zero’, that is, the day - hypothesized to be April 12th - when quite literally the taps will be turned off and the city will no longer be able to deliver potable water to its more than 650,000 customers, amounting to some 3+ million people. In preparation for Day Zero, the city has established a water-delivery contingency plan consisting of some 300 hundred water collection points where each citizen will be entitled to 25 litres of water per day. This is the World Health Organization approved minimum for the maintenance of human health (but little else). At the same time, the city has a number of new delivery systems in various stages of completion, including a number of desalination plants – Cape Town municipality is a coastal environment, surrounded by the sea on three sides – as well as numerous boreholes. Citizens are being encouraged to do their part, by cutting usage to 50 litres per person per day for the next 150 days. For a family of 4, this amounts to about 6 kilolitres of water for the household, the amount guaranteed as ‘free basic water’ under South Africa’s Water Act, but which, under the circumstances is being billed at about $0.40/Kl for all but those designated ‘indigent households’. There are also a wide range of restrictions in place governing the use of water – no car-washing or plant-watering with potable water, for example – and stiff penalties to be meted out to transgressors.

Understandably, the water crisis has created a political firestorm across legislative levels. The City is controlled by the Democratic Alliance (DA), as is the Province. The National Government – who has jurisdiction for water affairs – is under the control of the African National Congress (ANC). Politicians of every stripe are using the crisis to point fingers at those they believe to be the cause of the problem. Quite rightly, they are arguing that this is as much a crisis of governance and management as it is a result of natural processes. Quite wrongly, they are unsurprisingly blaming each other. The ANC is blaming the DA. The Federal DA, under the leadership of Mmusi Maimane, and the Provincial DA, under the leadership of Helen Zille, in turn have blamed both the ANC for inaction and politiking, but also Mayor Patricia de Lille, for ineffectual leadership (among other things). On Wednesday, the DA caucus within the Municipal government passed a vote of no-confidence in Mayor de Lille. At the same time, the Federal DA has announced its ‘Rescue Plan’ under the moniker #DefeatDayZero (see the Twitter handle @Defeat_DayZero). Among the rescue team, Patricia de Lille is conspicuous by her absence. In her stead is Ian Neilson, who will surely be appointed the caretaker Mayor once the DA finally gets around to kicking the right honorable Mayor de Lille to the curb.

I was recently in the Western Cape and was able to see how invested most citizens (and those others dependent upon City of Cape Town water, such as Stellenbosch municipality) are in conserving water as best they can. It has even been raining a bit over the last little while, but the hot summer takes almost all of the rainfall back directly as evaporation. Presently the dams stand at a collective 26% of capacity. This is not nearly enough to satisfy the usual daily usage of somewhere around 900 Ml. Mayor de Lille has been exhorting citizens to use less, to bring total usage down below 500 Ml/day. She has been quite strident in her criticism of the non-participation of many in a situation that requires ‘all hands on deck’. Her churlishness and threats of imposing a drought levy (based on property size as opposed to actual use) opened the door for her political opponents. So, as Cape Town lurches toward Day Zero, how is it that a world city could get itself into such a predicament? And how will it get itself out?

First things first, drought is natural. So is flood. Cape Town is subject to extreme events. A drought such as the present one is not unusual – there have been similar events three times over the past 100 years. If drought is normal, how is it that every drought becomes a crisis? This is a good question with an easy answer: because at the end of the day, it always rains. Most everywhere in the world, a dominant water management practice is, in the face of drought, we must pray for rain. And rain it will. Like I said, it is raining in Cape Town now. There are two significant differences with these past severe droughts, however. First, population increase: the Cape has been growing in leaps and bounds since the end of apartheid in 1994. The City says that it adds 8500 new water and sanitation customers every year. So, the most serious stress on the City’s water management system is the flood of people into the region. At present, approximately 64% (i.e. 345 Mm3/a) of the captured water resource goes to the city, with some 7% delivered to other municipalities (37 Mm3/a) and 29% to agriculture (158 Mm3/a). The system is comprised of 6 dams, 11,000 km of pipe, numerous reservoirs, underground aquifers, wastewater treatment (and reuse) plants and sea outfall systems. In other words, it is not unlike any other major city in the world: heavily dependent upon complex technologies and large amounts of financial capital to sustain itself. It is a mistake to blame the poor, who comprise the majority of the municipality’s population. It is estimated that informal settlements, for example, use only 5% of delivered water. The big consumers are the wealthy and these are not only South Africans; they come from all over the world, building giant homes, buying properties in gated communities, on golf estates, driving the expansion of other major municipal water users such as high end malls such as those at the Waterfront, Tyger Valley, Claremont and Canal Walk.

The second factor that makes this drought different is the region’s integration into globalization, in particular global commodity chains. The region is a major exporter of fresh fruit and wine. These are water-intensive industries. Post-apartheid has witnessed major expansion of the wine industry in the Cape. While these industries are increasingly ‘water wise’ – for example, installing drip irrigation systems – they are many. And ‘many’ means much more water. So the stress on the system is immense.

If we are to point fingers and lay blame, we should look to history. It is always fashionable in Africa to blame colonialism for much of the continent’s woes. I do it all the time in fact, in my classes, and I’m going to do it again here. Cape Town was settled by the Dutch in the mid-17^th Century. What ‘settled’ means in this case, was they began to recreate their world in this ‘new world’: to build a little Amsterdam at the tip of Africa. But Cape Town is not Amsterdam. The Western Cape is a winter rainfall region. This means that it gets the bulk of its rainfall over a 3-4 month period (May-August), with much lesser amounts falling through the hot summer months. This is quite the opposite of most of the temperate world, where precipitation days are in the order of 300+/year and where winter months constitute ‘free storage’. In the Cape, when it is cold, water falls and flows intensely for a short period of time. That water then slowly disappears over the hot summer months (it is estimated that evaporation from the City’s dams accounts for 15% of total water use).

The Dutch and later English and still later independent-South African answer to this was to dam it and divert it. In other words, to flatten out the hydrograph, to make ‘flow’ look more like Holland or England, by capturing it in the winter, thereby making it available throughout the year. New Holland? No problem! Except there is a problem: what happens when it fails to rain? Well, we know what happens: we are watching the crisis unfold today before our very eyes.

Urban form is also a serious problem. Being ‘developed’ means copying the West. If Western cities pave over their landscapes then so should we. If Western cities create elaborate storm water runoff systems to ensure that basements do not flood, then so should we. And so we see an urban form at the southern tip of Africa that looks eerily like that of any coastal European or North American city. If there is year round precipitation, this is generally not too problematic. But if rains are short and intense and you live on a coast, what you have done is help the very water you need in the hot dry summer to run away to the sea. Is this not the height of foolishness? We do it everywhere around the world, so Cape Town is in good company when it comes to building cities a certain way because you have always done so. These path dependent practices must stop! In the short run, Cape Town needs more water now. But in the longer run, Cape Town needs to rethink its urban form, to use this point of acute crisis to initiate innovative practices that help the city recover its African identity. We all need to soften our cities, to rip up the endless kilometres of tarmac and cement and concrete and replace it with indigenous green spaces, to soak up the water, not rush it away. To encourage infiltration, natural plant growth, and discourage evaporation and massive stormwater runoff. Psychological studies are out there articulating the myriad health benefits of green space. People are happy in parks, are they not? And people should be brought into the conversation about what might be done, how, when and to what ultimate purpose. This crisis creates an opportunity not only to rethink the City, but to rethink citizenry and urban governance.

But (poor) governance is at the heart of this crisis. As stated above, South Africa’s political leaders are engaged in a blame-game, scoring cheap political points rather than engaging in constructive collective action. Even DA leader Maimane appears to be on the campaign trail with his ‘Defeat Day Zero’, rather than on the social action trail. If you think I misjudge him, then ask yourself, where is Patricia de Lille in this effort? Should she not be on his ‘list’ of those involved in the ‘rescue plan’? Cape Town cannot be allowed to reach Day Zero. Given that water is a national priority, the ANC must reach out to the DA and work with them on this issue. The recent announcement by the Minister of Water and Environmental Affairs, Edna Molelwa, that groundwater restrictions were now in place looks very much like a potential bridge to be built across the political party abyss.

However, even if the ANC and the DA come together, one wonders where the citizenry are in all of this. Without doubt there is a lack of trust between the state and civil society. Understandably, this stems from the apartheid years. But it has lingered due to a continuing inability of elected officials to do the right thing. My dear friend, Lewis Jonker, used to explain state inaction this way: 'If you are always planning, you are never failing.' In other words, rather than take the hard decision now (that might be politically costly in the short run, but the right thing for society in the long run), government would rather commission a study to 'look into' the issue, while, in the meantime, dithering along. In the case of water governance and management, this means praying for rain. There is a very large literature out there chronicling the gap between beautiful plans and ugly outcomes across the water governance and management landscape not only in the Western Cape, but in the country, the region and the world. (We would do well to watch the Cape closely; in some ways, it is the 'canary in the coal mine', signalling a fate that awaits many a city around the world. Did someone say 'climate change'?)

In the absence of good governance, there is currently a borehole drilling bonanza underway across the middle-to-upper class households of the municipality. It’s called ‘self-help’. It’s the sort of private sector involvement that reinforces the lack of trust between governors and governed, however: I better look after myself because the state is useless. At the same time, one wonders how the poor feel in the middle of all this. To be sure, should day zero arrive, hundreds of thousands of ‘Capetonians’ will not even notice. They have been struggling with ‘day zero’ for many years. Whenever there are water restrictions, there is always a build up of animosity not only between the state and the poorer sections of the citizenry, but also between the rich and the poor: those who live in Retreat look across the railway tracks and up the hill at Constantia and see very little evidence of compliance with water restrictions. The poor ‘pay’ through a loss of access because the state can control the flow to community taps; while the rich ‘pay’ the increased levies with little discernible impact on their disposable incomes. Even with Level 4 restrictions in place, households that approximate Western-use levels (i.e. 20-35 Kl/month) will pay no more than $200/month to continue on their profligate way while facing the most severe drought in living memory. And, should they not wish to pay, they can invest the approximately $5000 it is costing to sink a borehole deep enough to satisfy your ‘normal’ household water needs. Drought? What drought?

The water crisis, I fear, is exposing the hidden underbelly of social fractiousness that exists not only within the Western Cape but across South Africa as a whole. If you scan the Twitterverse or Facebook you will find no shortage of commentary that says it will be nice to see the rich queue along with the poor for a change. One wonders how you build social capital where people are so unevenly impacted by the impending shortage of a non-substitutable, essential resource such as potable water. One hopes that rationality will emerge from across the political spectrum and across civil society so that all South Africans see the Cape as an opportunity to build social bridges rather than blow them up.

I have no faith in the Municipal government to impose stiff fines on transgressors, nor to show the leadership necessary to enforce higher tariffs that make everyone feel the economic pinch should they choose to ignore calls to do the right thing. In the short term, as I said earlier, the focus therefore must be on increased supply: ship-borne desalination brought in from elsewhere; boreholes drilled and reticulated to the system. This will cost a lot of money. Cape Town should not be made to stand alone. There is no shortage of resource access, use and management expertise across the country, the region, the world. We should put our heads together and be part of the solution, rather than gaze on at the problem as though we were rubbernecking at a crash site. The Cape Town crisis is a national emergency and the ANC must mobilize the necessary resources now. Maybe a useful start would be to drain out-going President Zuma’s pool at Nkandla and ship that water to State House in the Cape. Every little bit helps.