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!