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Neighbourhood responses to drought in the Western Cape

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Abstract

An extreme drought event occurred in the Western Cape when the mean level of water supply dams declined to 28% of capacity in August 2017 (Odendaal 2019). Our survey of 240 households and 71 businesses identified neighbourhood variations in response to the drought and to local government restrictions in water usage, and in the methods of adaptation that were implemented to mitigate the impact of the disaster. Whereas water consumption declined dramatically in comparison with drought responses in other contexts (Shaw et al. in Am Water Works Assoc 84(10):34–41, 1992, https://doi.org/10.1002/j.1551-8833.1992.tb05862.x; Miller and Buys in Soc Nat Resour 21(3):244–257, 2008; Buurman et al. in Int J Water Resour Dev 33(1):31–50, 2017, https://doi.org/10.1080/07900627.2016.1138398; Okaka and Odhiambo in S Afr Geogr J 100(3):378–393, 2018), significant variations in attitude and behaviour emerged between respondents of Western Cape neighbourhoods with different socio-economic profiles. Middle class and older households and water-intensive businesses or organisations were more likely to report substantial decreases in water usage and to be critical of official interventions than were poorer or younger households and small businesses.

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Notes

  1. Valuable comparative qualitative data were simultaneously collected by means of key informants across the city, by the University of Cape Town’s African Centre for Cities (Ziervogel 2019).

  2. Whereas DA support had been at the 69% level in one of the Ward 46 voting districts (97,090,847) in the 2014 national election, it decreased to 39% in the subsequent national election in May 2019. The beneficiary parties were the ANC, GOOD and Al Jama-ah (IEC 2019).

  3. Groundup (Jones 2018) reported “The tariff for water usage between zero and 6000 litres would increase from R26.25 per 1000 litres to R40.73. And the tariff for usage between 6000 and 10,500 litres would increase from R46.00 per 1000 litres to R48.88….. But monthly water usage between 10,500 and 35,000 litres would still carry a much higher tariff: R127.13 per 1000 litres. Using more than 35,000 litres of water will cost R768.64 per 1000 litres, which the City describes as punitive. (10,500 litres per month is exactly equivalent to a family of seven using 50 litres per day each in a 30-day month”. https://www.groundup.org.za/article/city-explains-new-water-tariffs/.

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Acknowledgements

This research was made possible by a generous grant from the CEO of the Human Sciences Research Council, South Africa. The time given by the survey respondents and the city official for the sharing of experiences was highly appreciated.

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  1. Human Sciences Research Council, 116 Buitengracht Street, Cape Town, 8001, South Africa

    Stephen Rule, Saahier Parker, Yamkela Majikijela & Wilfred Lunga

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Rule, S., Parker, S., Majikijela, Y. et al. Neighbourhood responses to drought in the Western Cape. GeoJournal 86, 2267–2278 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10708-020-10185-5

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