To lay the blame for the Cape water crisis at the feet of the DA-run City and province, as Dougie Oakes did in his Cape Times article (Thursday, February 1), is to be recklessly irresponsible and blind to the reality of the looming threat faced by all South Africans.
No matter how big the Cape water crisis is - and make no mistake, it is monumental - it is still the tip of the iceberg in our national water crisis. Most of the country will face water shortages in the very near future.
Water is already running out in parts of the Eastern Cape, KZN, Free State and Limpopo. Many smaller towns have had periods of dry taps in the recent past.
Last week the Department of Water and Sanitation confessed that the taps may run dry across the country within the next few years. Many more cities will soon be staring down the barrel of a Day Zero gun.
We cannot lurch from one local water crisis to the next, blaming local and provincial governments each time.
It is also reckless for anyone to drive the false narrative in the media that local and provincial governments are responsible.
Yes, the City of Cape Town and the Western Cape, and the councils of all municipal areas and provinces, must do everything in their power to avert and manage crises. However, they don’t have much power.
The fact is that the budget and responsibility to provide bulk water to municipalities resides wholly with the national DWS. Almost everything that the City and province are doing to augment water supplies is technically outside their legal mandate.
Blaming local and provincial authorities for water shortages in 2018 is like blaming them for load shedding in 2008. It’s simply irrational.
However, worse than this is that it lets the national government off the hook, at a time when we need to be holding them accountable like never before.
Yes, this is the worst drought Cape Town has faced in recorded history, but it is still more national governance failure than natural disaster.
Further, it must act as an early warning system to the whole country. South Africa’s water infrastructure is crumbling and straining under the weight of ANC national government incompetence, cadre deployment, state capture and mismanagement.
Water and Sanitation Minister Nomvula Mokonyane demonstrated her commitment to water provision when she appointed Dudu Myeni, fresh from annihilating SAA, to chair the merged Umgeni and Mhlathuze water boards.
Right on cue, she announced that Umgeni would be the contractor for the desalination plant at the Waterfront, where Cape Town has already commissioned a private sector-led plant, which can only complicate and slow the process down. It is fair to question whether the minister is trying to produce water or to control tenders.
The Western Cape province has it worst of all.
The ANC national government clearly has a conflict of interest here. They are responsible for bulk water supply and yet they are in opposition.
In the 2017/18 financial year, the DWS had a budget of R12.2 billion. It would have been fair to expect at least R1bn of that to have been spent in the Western Cape. Or even more than that, with the province into the third year of the worst drought on record.
But, in fact, the DWS spent just R5million, to remove a build-up of silt at the Voëlvlei Dam Catchment Area, a project they failed to complete.
The Western Cape government, using budget that was not technically available for that purpose, completed the work of cleaning the water canals.
People living in the Western Cape comprise 11% of SA’s population and we received 0.04% of the DWS’s infrastructure spend in 2017/18. Not one cent of the DWS infrastructure budget in 2015/16 or 2016/17 was spent in the Western Cape.
These are easy dots to join. It’s clear the ANC national government does not care about the plight of this DA-run province. Has President Jacob Zuma or Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa or Mokonyane done anything to avert this catastrophe? No.
Perhaps this is why Oakes lays into DA leaders. He knows they’re the only ones genuinely willing to solve this crisis. They are the only ones listening and taking action.
Mmusi Maimane
DA Leader