A Tumultuous Start to 2017

Abstract

With a new organisational structure in place and a political appetite for change, Mayor de Lille adopted the drought as a risk to be managed directly by her office. The number of days of water storage that remained made headlines every day and this created sufficient panic to capture the public’s imagination. High-consumption customers were identified and received phone calls or personal visits to encourage responsible water use. As dam levels dropped throughout summer, Cape Town declared a local disaster, and the notion of augmented supplies grew in popularity. In parallel, a devastating informal settlement fire occupied City resources and media attention, and through a series of events, eroded the fragile trust between the mayor and the water department. As a result, and crafted solely by the mayor’s office, the City introduced the water resilience programme at the start of winter. The programme promised to provide water from augmentation schemes to function completely independently from surface water—within a year.

Truth lifts the heart, like water refreshes thirst

–Rumi