Anarchy. Unrest. A modern-day catastrophe. Worse than Word War Two. Cape Town’s current water crisis has us all panicked. As we slip closer and closer to Day Zero, the city and its people go into survival mode.

We look beyond the screaming headlines and cocoa conspiracy theories, and ask real water experts to break it down for us. They tell us that the problem is simple to understand, but the solutions are complex.

Cape Town has had consecutive dry winters for three years, now throwing all the City’s long-term water augmentation plans into disarray. The severity of the drought was impossible for climatologists to predict, and the City was caught off-guard.

Water augmentation had to be accelerated last year, but by then it was too late. Add to the fact that Capetonians have struggled to reduce their water consumption, and a crisis was inevitable.

But how do we get ourselves out of this, and what is the City’s plan to avoid Day Zero? We cut through the noise to bring you a sober account of Cape Town water crisis.

Watch this video below, it is important that we understand what we can do and how we should NOT PANIC!

 

Video production: Imaad Griffiths, Chulu Ratsibe, Nidha Narrandes and Adrian Ephraim

Article written by

Nidha Narrandes is a food-obsessed travel addict with 21 years of journalism experience. Her motto - Travel. Eat. Repeat. She is happiest on a road to nowhere without a plan. A masterchef at home, she can't do without chilli - because chilli makes the world a tastier place.