Cape Town Water – Too many Soapboxes. Too much noise.

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One week on since my first blog. Looking for some quiet.

I don’t want to add to the exhausting roar of voices this week to be honest. I feel like taking my grubby body and my grubby clothes into a quiet place in my grubby house.

The 2017 CNN “Hurricane” reporters in the USA all talked, rather quaintly, about “hunkering down” to wait for the worst. I’m gonna hunker down.

Distractor Alert!!!

On Monday the City announced the postponement of Day Zero from April 12 to May 11…

A handful of days into the high profile “panic stations” affair the date galloped along muchly.

Let that sink in.

And, predictably, UP sprang all the gloaters saying that they knew it was all a scam!!!! They bounce their glee to one another, saying how they had cleverly not fallen for the ploy, they shout “Eskom”, with a nod to the recent power struggles, they announce to thousands their intention to go take a good long “up yours” bath.

Now if you read my first blog you might ask why I’m not throwing a street party! We are pushed further into winter etc etc. Good news!!!

It’s the farmers,stoopid!

I am not immune to the point that it is good to push back the so-called ‘Day Zero”.

Just this though. We can’t now abandon serious urban water saving, shouting an entitlement “Foul”!!!

We HAVE to be schooled that the water relief comes via a massive, once-off, short term, calculated “river” of stored water, on the back of a farming community. We didn’t pull this off through simple widespread commitment to water saving. We were bailed out by a public-spirited agricultural community, which had conserved its supplies and could understand the greater need on the other side of the fence.

Dudes, give thanks, and then knuckle down yourselves to do your bit. It’s not a “DA” success. It’s not yet “your” success. It’s a sterling contribution. It’s not the end of the drought road.

We have no hotline to the raingods. Water saving simply cannot stop. We can’t succumb to the seductive script of the “Fake Problem” cynics and go back to our profligate water-ways.

Quiet serious call

Of course this is my own little soap box 😊. But I’d like to see it as a kind of Tardis soap box (cf Dr Who). It’s hella roomy inside.

Roll up, roll up. Place for all in this soap box. Magnify and multiply the voice. Let it seep into the streets.

Let’s all persistently challenge all serious and authentic leaders to take a composed stance that simply urges citizens, congregants, staff members, loved ones, interest groups to pull out the stops to save every drop now.

Together the masses can kick the so-called Day Zero right “out of the water”.

It’s dedicated water conservation that will turn this situation around right now.

We DO THE DO and we guide everyone else to be water guardians as well!

Yep, it won’t be as dramatic as the opening of the sluice gates and watching a glorious roar of water cascading out… If we save en masse water doesn’t spout out – it just stays put!! A little “bad people” dial will go down somewhere in a small office…

But we should be able to step away beaming as delightedly as the farmers did a day or so ago, when they gave us their savings and took a gamble on their future.

Who are the good guys?

I am intensely moved by the efforts of the wonderful super-savers doing amazing back-breaking things to use and re-use and re-use their water and who sacrifice endlessly for others.

The fb site “Watershedding Western Cape” fulfills a great service in headlining articles and providing an ideas’ exchange forum.

What are the distractors?

Soapbox glory: thousands of new scriptwriters pop up

We don’t need to knock together a soap box and head to Hyde Park.

We just pull out our phones, select a virtual crowd, and we shout, preach, sneer, coax, sneer at coaxers, pull out our old sermons, deride, defend, and generally thump away at our pet themes while either ignoring other inputs or doing our best to rubbish them. We PONTIFICATE. Here and there we “like”, when someone sings our song.

When we meet in queues, social gatherings etc we trot along with our soapboxes – ever relentlessly  punting our theories.

So in this past week thousands more people have added their opinions, questions and injunctions to the mix. Heads spin. Who is MY guru then? And who has feet of clay?

Who IS navigating and captaining this lot?

The Premier wrote last week that she was trying to work her way through the disparate voices, even amongst scientists. Her Daily Maverick article this week (again… sigh…) runs us through the water roles and responsibilities, while turning sideways as well this time to look at errors on the part of the City.

The scientists, and those long in the water saddle, are firing up and digging in to try to ensure that their positions of passion are adopted.

As an absolute non-water-expert am I alone if I find all this rather disconcerting? The premier should not be doing a quick catch up and then making decisions. Which is what her article of last week implies. She may be smart and all but it’s not like deciding whether or not to do a cultural festival this year. Where is the seated and empowered formal assemblage of a cross section of serious experts and the seeds of medium and long term solutions? So it looks a less like a water-solution lottery. And less governed by red tape and battered public-service-type conservatism.

On a national level, we see efforts to halt donor shipments, um truckments, of water to the Cape. They are in town again this week, querying apparent underspend on millions assigned to drought relief and giving assurance that they will step in once things are “dire’. The presumed declaration of a status of “national disaster” looks to be next week and will doubtless trigger some intra-state and intra-politico sparring. 

I’ll just leave this here shall I?

⇓⇓

 

The political tidal wave masses its forces against the sitting mayor. Through words and actions.

Another political tidal wave turns its attention on the President of the country.

[Aside: Might we get a new water minister…?]

[Snide aside: The parliamentarians hit the town this week – originally for the State of the Nation address, which has morphed into its uncomfortable parody, the “Mis-take of the Nation”. Do they also shower only once a week? And use old fizzy drink bottles with straws in them as makeshift taps? Flush once a day???? ]

As a positive suggestion: it would be great if a Parliamentarians’ Water Role Model Movement kicked in and they became stately super-savers.

“Posh plighters” respond to “push button panic”

Large numbers of potential soap-boxers were not available online of course.

They had their fighting spurs on, the car fleet revved up, their WhatsApp buddies sending hush hush links about availability of water defence supplies (like the gamespotters in the Kruger National Park) and they HIT THE STORES and CLEANED THEM OUT!

Bottled water…. GONE!!! And NOBODY is sharing pics of their water stashes! 🙂 

Although on their soap boxes they might be wailing they could not possibly carry 25kg of water, come the queues, on the shop floor they handily hefted 20 kg cartons of spring water into their trollies, speeding off with their booty, despite the wails of those who had lost out.

It was a terrifying spectacle…

Droves are now deciding to push pipes and machines into the earth to suck out water that they think is mother nature’s gift to them but which will still need tens of thousands of rands to convert into something usable. I am sober about the lack of honest brokers and legitimate experts in the drilling and filtering brigade.

Other things to brood on

I note here the noveau riche: the plumbers, the stockists and pop up water entrepreneurs and the noveau poor: the guys that bought the water thingummies, the nurseries, the water-dependent.

The quantum of water ration was shown this past week to be relative, right? If all school-going children are now to be assigned 20 litres per day AT SCHOOL ie over and above their previously assigned 25 litres then there’s more in the “dishing well” than was previously indicated. Don’t the sums tell us that you rather keep the extra 20 litres for the around 600000 urban learners IN THE TAPS than try truck them to each school? 

Does the R200m announced cost for Day Zero implementation not refer perhaps only to projected outlay by the City? Will the outlay by the province eg to ship water and set up storage and water emergency toileting arrangements at the schools etc not build out that sum considerably?

Some really good reads came out this long week

While the political eyes of the world are on South Africa this week the enviro-journos have had lots to say as they write their own “Cape crisis” scripts, all starring the starkly dry Theewaterskloof Dam and the queues at Newlands.

I like to look at the serious stuff and there were some thought-leading reads coming through.

Like in EVERY WEEK, see on Tuesday morning early early, the “must read” is to be found in Tom Brown’s regular CAPE DAMS REPORT at https://showme.co.za/paarl/ . This is a trusted precision, yet warm, exposition of where we are at and where we look to be going. Equip yourself with the FACTS and be exposed to some angles.

I related to this important piece about the MESSAGING. Open it up. https://theconversation.com/why-treating-water-scarcity-as-a-security-issue-is-a-bad-idea-90951 . Written by Joelien Pretorius, Associate Professor of Political Studies at UWC, it tackles the Cape Town modus operandi head-on. It kicks off like this “Helen Zille, the Premier of the Western Cape in South Africa, has made two startling claims about the water crisis in the province. She says there will be anarchy when the taps run dry, and that normal policing will be inadequate. She stated this as fact. Neither claim has any basis in truth. But they reflect an “elite panic”: society’s elite’s fear of social disorder…. Research shows that mass hysteria and lawlessness during disasters is actually remarkably rare. Yet elite panic can lead to security taking priority over public safety.”

There is a lot in the link below that picks up on some of the things I have been saying about the need for hugely detailed and complex INTER-DISCIPLINARY WORK AND LEADERSHIP – this is not a monocular biz!

Read it here. https://pursuit.unimelb.edu.au/articles/how-to-prevent-cities-from-drying-up . I like the focus on the need to have a long-term plan for what they call “community engagement” and on the minutiae of the need for diversification of water sources, even down to a household level. The contributors all on one inter-disciplinary campus team at Melbourne University include experts on sustainable food systems, members of the Hydrology and Water Resource Group in the Department of Infrastructure Engineering, environmental engineers, chemical engineers, an expert on vulnerability and adaption to climate change from the School of Geography. This piece describes Cape Town as the “canary in the cage” for the rest of the drought-threatened world.

I also really liked a facebook post by Prof Lesley Green, Associate Director of Environmental Humanities at UCT, especially her theme of “ecothoughtlessness” and her well-articulated vision for a new eco-politics in Cape Town.

So here’s a little potted Tardis summary: DO THE DOLet’s just get quiet and work

Authentic leaders – Guide people to become water guardians

Citizens – Check out http://wswc.org.za for tips & info docs

Boss people

• Quieten down. Give us good news but not in crude or smarmy soundbites.
• Make darn sure you individually save too – and can look us in the eye
• Get the bad guys and super-abusers, boss people
• Sort out your messaging – still too many pop-up “saviours” et al
• Look beyond the “now” and train our eyes of the bigger horizons too – enrol an outstanding team of boffs of all kinds
• Sieze the day! Tell us how you will work to give sanitation and water rights to all. Find the millions to resourcing the informal settlements, clean the rivers and restore hope. Provide dignity.

Images might be susceptible to copyright law. Sources: Cartoonstock images, Cathy Shaw (farmers’ water), Carol A Hand (girl crouching), KSifu (Tardis)

Postscript: Next blog will kick off a ritzy look of a new kind. Working title(s): Cape Town Water: Beating the water queue bads and bloos. Thinking of two or three. Seems a really dire need for some laffs around the place. Me too. I also want to laff. 

Cape Town Water – change the script and cancel the opening night

Note to readers: This blog is not intended as a drought timeline or a set of data. It is not an account of tiers of government. It is not a silly piece of denialism or of mud-slinging or a set of options that are discussed ad nauseam elsewhere. I will just put the cast onto the stage, sketch the plot and identify the contaminants. My perspective. I know others will have different points of view but hope whoever might read this doesn’t get snarled up in nit-picking but looks for the main thrust. 

Friends, officials and politicians

Here’s the thing. Stop this shithole express. We want to get off.

This is a Capetonian speaking. Grubby, smelly, stiff (from, you know, BUCKETS) and completely worn out from trying to figure everything out. Real life down here on this little SA appendix goes way way beyond any possible over-written script for a far-fetched “Apocalypse Now” movie.

Change the script

In case you are too worn down to read this all, here is my bottom line.

Remove the ‘Day Zero” spectre.  You decided to get us into a frenzy around 13.5% in the dams as being the lowest point for water safety. You invented the model of turning off the taps and getting us into queues.

Now change the script. You can tell us that “Day Zero” was an initially conscientious model but tell us that you now realise it will destroy the economy, force unemployment and cost millions. And that there is a better way.

Think about it now. Ironically once the die is cast to start to set up the PoDs you are pretty much doomed to see it all through. You will have to declare “Curtain up” on Day Zero and push through with it. You would need otherwise to ride the storm of accusations of bungling. You would need to deal with the auditor’s judgement of having incurred “fruitless and wasteful expenditure”. You must steel yourselves to cope with the potential absurdity/disaster of millions of people queuing in the April rains when they should have been guarding their children, their health and their safety in their own homes. Just to show that the Day Zero notion was the best bet.

Either way, politicians, you are staring down the barrel of a gun at a populace that is worn out, scared and angry.

If the dams run dry, you are put out to dry.

If the queue system flops because you actually can’t control the water usage that way after all, given your proposed loose honour system of letting anyone pitch up, look the water official in the eye, and say they are “there for 100 litres for their family”, then you and we will be sunk.

And don’t forget the risk of a vast spurt of bloody-minded stockpiling of municipal water by people who are “darned if they are going to suffer” as they prep, rather darkly, for “the day the taps go off”.

The Day Zero movie has lost its plot all of a sudden. There are too many people shouting and shooting on the stage. The slogans and the lists and pictures of planning teams fail to impress. The citizens are panicking, guys. It’s January, the month of empty purses. But we are out there buying, buying. And blaming, blaming. And cussing, cussing.

There are millions of people worrying about job cuts. The aged, the health-compromised and their carers are blank-eyed and desperate. The famers and their workers are on their knees. The rich are suspected to be waiting and planning their moves: the people they must “let go”, the withdrawal to another place to live. Even big-hearted philanthropy falters when your very own loved ones need you to lug their buckets.

Evidence that the plot is unravelling

JP Smith on Friday told News 24 the set up of the water disaster management will cost R200million. That it’s a last resort. That he doesn’t want it to happen. But they will need weeks to set it up. Understandably.

Astonishingly he says NO-ONE WILL CARRY IDS ETC ie the data-fundis, the water guardians, the budget officials don’t plan to know how many people they will dish out water for and YOU CAN GO TO ANY SITE. While it might look charmingly organic and responsive, it’s not sensible! People can’t zoom themselves off to shorter queues at will. These might be the old folk holding places in the queues. Or the kids. Child labour?

The sites might not all be open 24 hours a day, we are told. So even if you have planned to set your alarm and go through at 3 am you might find the senior person on duty has used his/her discretion to shut it down, says JP. Because officials present will have to be paid overtime.

AFTER ALL THE TENSION, PRE TRAUMATIC STRESS DISORDER, HUGE CASH OUTLAY FOR SOME PEOPLE, we are down, in fact, to an HONOUR SYSTEM ORDEAL. Of gargantuan proportions. And of an uncertain duration. 

The Deputy Mayor stares at the camera of journalists and fumbles for words. He is not able to talk about Day Zero, he says. He has had only four days on the job, he says. He didn’t see the questions beforehand. The leader of the DA nationally is parachuted into town to deliver a no-holds barred exposition of what is really happening. And it turns out to be a set up of cheering people in coordinated T Shirts but the message is still – you must save water. The Premier sets about tweeting seriously ill-advised jibes about, of all things, colonialism and karma, and punctuates her feed with random adverts for products. The National Minister, hitherto unseen by us citizens, powers into town with a flurry of remarks. CR says good things, but from another continent.

Pieces of legislation/policy, either local or national, fly at us, confusing, threatening, daunting. On a Friday, for example, a new law about borehole monitoring pops out to be applied by Monday. Due dates for comments allow only for terribly short turnaround periods. Over the holiday season. Then the due dates are changed.

Questions looking for answers pour out unremittingly as various citizens join the water saving bus but don’t have a clue about what to do. Unscrupulous pop-up saviours take money, dispense ill-informed advice, share false rumours.  

The battle for proper focus 

Weeks away from the imposed 13.5% dam capacity cut off, through a series of misadventures we, the citizens, are faced with:

1. Intra-DA issues, apparent factions, people lawyering up and the leaders of the drought management squad all either taken off their jobs or resigning. This leads to a NEW management team, introduced at a fairly surreal event, driven by wildly applauding “people in the room”. At this event the sitting mayor is not even present.
2. Provincial/National stand-offs and allegations
3. Mixed messages, or no messages, about process and plans

We simply don’t want to be part of a leadership and management High Noon. We don’t.

“Posh Plight”?

On a deep level this crisis MOSTLY exposes, apart from water supply skirmishes,  the terrible inequities in our system. The bosses don’t acknowledge the notion of this rationing panic being “white plight” or “posh plight”. They only squint at the sea of water-haves on the one side and the basically have-nots on the other and they push out a dull-eyed “posh plight” message to all.

CoCT: Don’t pander to the posh!!! Be tough. Spend your anticipated millions on going to the doors of the people who aren’t saving. Go there in person. Not just via workspeople who dig up pavements to put in restrictors. That householders now have to pay for. Don’t give out buckets in Constantia.

Muddying the water – an important aside as to why we didnt get stuck in properly

Dear CoCT – it is true that we also didn’t save fervently because you weren’t up to speed enough. Your bills were wrong, the readings were often fake. So many distractors. We didn’t really believe your figures or your plans. To be honest. Your dashboard sat dead on the drilling and the desalination for so long. It said 50% completion but we heard news of no progress on the site or tenders not issued. We knew it told no story. Have a dashboard or NOT but if you have one then run it accurately and honestly. How COULD you tell us a different x% of people who were saving EACH WEEK when we knew you only read our meters once a month?

WHY did you let us run (even until now) with our supposed limits relatively high? Why didn’t you cut targets deeper sooner? You needed to do better with your data. Do better with enforcing compliance. You knew better than we did about weather patterns, data trends, timelines for procurement, the fact that borehole water doesn’t pop out of the ground ready for humans to drink.

Pushing the panic button – do you know for sure how that works?

How did you miss the researched facts about drought anxiety?• Solastalgia is a word coined in 2003 to describe feelings of sadness, anxiety, grief, and helplessness due to changes in our cherished environments – a psychic or existential distress. It comes from the Latin word “solacium” (comfort) and the Greek root “-algia’ (pain). And us with our hearts pounding so anxiously about Day Zero.

How did you leave us so long with so little information? The literature is bulging with ample evidence of drought related stress and disorders, particularly conducted across big studies eg across states in the USA and in Australia. These afflict in particular those already troubled by mental disorders, by those with family responsibility, notably women, and the frail elderly. Hugely impacted are rural communities and farmers. And that is just “normal” drought PTSD. Not yet linked to stress imposed by anticipation of “taps off” and queuing. 

What’s the citizens’ alternative to Day Zero?

Dismantle the proposed “Day Zero” in its present form. 

Would it help if we said “Point taken”?  We didn’t save diligently or manically enough. It’s a fact. Some super savers saved so hard that the lazy or the rich just cruised along.

It is clear that the solution at this point lies in saving water to an extreme degree. Can the citizens not commit to doing that? And to even getting down to the 25l level and holding that level, all by themselves, and without the horrendous cut off and queuing plan? We want to leave the nanny state!!!!!

Let’s set a trial voluntary “Water-cutter week” for a few weeks from now. We all dip en masse to say 35litres ppp day. People who are already at that level can go straight to 25 litres.

We say “a few weeks”, noting that people who have not saved need that little while to get started. They need to find their water meters, dammit, and check the usage per flush, per dish wash, per shower etc and get themselves under control. BOLD CAPS for all the words in this paragraph. Every family is linked somehow to a child. Work your messages into homes via the children. Let them be home water meter monitors, home cheerleaders, weather trackers. Innovate. Enlist religious leaders.

Then, hopefully, after “Water Cutter” week we see a huge improvement. We have intrinsic motivation. We have another “water cutter” week. We go down further. A giant barometer shows us the positive impact of our dedication and sacrifice. We get to 25litres a person. We are holding that position. WE DON’T NEED TO HAVE THE TAPS TURNED OFF. 

Use schools, clinics, courts, stations – any civic buildings, national or provincial, and all CT based radio stations etc to share saving progress. It can’t only show on twitter and inaccessible or sophisticated media. Plain messaging across all spheres of government, in banks, in shops, places of worship, everywhere. Show how our efforts are making inroads. Run reward barometers and not panic ones.

Meanwhile acknowledge all those who have done remarkable things to save. Give accolades, for example, to those running the Facebook Page called “Watershedding Western Cape”, (and now also on http://wswc.org.za) who have patiently schooled so many, up to 146K now, introduced us to scientists and experts, offered space for amazing entrepreneurs who do nifty watersmart things with ordinary household items and share these tips

Curb the exploiters who are robbing the public. Encourage and uplift us. Set the scene for us to assume control so we can celebrate en masse when eg April 12 comes and goes and we are on top of our saving, ready for the winter rains and our terrible anxieties about work, income, health, sanity are taken away.

Dear officials and politicians. Sigh. We don’t want logos or slogans and pretty words and staff off setting up Day Zero sites. We want all available staff answering calls or stopping leaks, or out tackling those who aren’t saving enough. We want you to be planning for proper physical solutions for our future. We want water scientists of note, we want people who understand the psychology of a community under severe strain and anxiety, we want micro enterprise support to help people recover from drought-induced layoffs and trauma.

Lead us through it. Tell us about all that you have in hand for the recovery and development phase. We want better water supplies and infrastructure to reach people who have been water and sewerage service deprived all along. We are knocked out of our complacency.  Build on that. We need to understand and learn from our farmers. We need, right now, to care more about other parts of the country struggling against drought.

That bottom line again

The DA-led council INVENTED “DAY ZERO” DIDN’T THEY?

Remember the script when we first read it late last year? The surreal landscape that was presented, with armed guards, queues, rations – how sci-fi and dismissable it all seemed. It wasn’t ever our plan. Now, while we stare it in the eye, astonishingly, we are faced with imperious commands to DEFEAT DAY ZERO!!!! Dude, we didn’t put it there as a dire scarecrowish terminator in the first place.

Just take DAY ZERO off the stage. Change the script.

If you put out a referendum to ask if people want to come to collection points or if they will voluntarily cut back to the target figure and keep to it, there will be nobody who votes for the queue and collection ordeal.

In his weekly impressive fb CAPE DAMS REPORT, Tom Brown, at (https://www.facebook.com/ShowMePaarl) consistently points out, using data, that we could pull through to winter if we pull our weight. In his opinion pieces, the water strategist of note, Anthony Turton, says the ship has not yet sunk and we, the people (the friends) are still on board and can make things happen to stave off “shut down”. Water expert and regular commentator, Dr Kevin Winter, recently wrote an encouraging piece “Five signs that Day Zero may be averted”. Find it here.  http://www.science.uct.ac.za/news/five-signs-day-zero-may-be-averted

Just do it, officials and politicians.

YOU Defeat Day Zero right here and now by de-declaring it as a “thing”.  You can have it up your sleeves if you need but don’t make it our destiny. Don’t make us citizens spin out of control. Manage the message with absolute precision. 

Let’s start again.

Declare how you are dedicating yourselves to service and making a much better future for us. Take the plethora of voices down. Give us experts, who are simply doing the dos.

Say you did your best and it wasn’t perfect and you are sorry. We will say that we are sorry too that we didn’t do better. THEN WE ALL GET ON WITH DOING BETTER.

“Hang in there dams, you can do it!”. That’s what I can hang my heart onto.

Go citizens go! You can make it work!