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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 DO
Let’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.
Floating an Idea 