Full pools and dry taps: water inequality in Cape Town

In Cape Town, bathers wipe the sand off their feet in the showers on the beaches. Irrigation canals feed the famous vineyards. And Shadrack Mogress gets angry as he fills a barrel of water to flush the toilet.

Four years ago a tremendous drought that nearly left the tourist capital of South Africa completely without water, with all its pipes empty, the dreaded “Day Zero”. He finally dodged it and now the water flows freely, but not for everyone.

At Shadrack Mogress's house, in the Khayelitsha neighborhood, taps only work at times and rarely at full pressure.

So, at age 56, he gets up early to fill a keg while the supply is still running and ensure that his family of six can drink and clean during the day.

“We also need to drink water from that one to clean the bathroom, which is an insult towards the end of the day,” Mogress is angry.

“We have bathrooms here. We have showers here. We can't use them,” he protests. “Our children go to school in the morning around 6:00am. Sometimes there is no water at that time,” he insists.

The man claims to have contacted municipal officials several times on these issues, but without receiving any response.

“We are in the middle of a pandemic here, and we don't even have water to wash our hands,” he is indignant.

The tankers that deliver water to the neighborhood are not to be trusted and the taps change on weekends, explains Sandile Zatu, a 45-year-old resident. “We have no choice but to get up in the morning and try to fill our bucket as much as possible,” he says.

- 31 neighborhoods without water -

During the drought, municipal efforts to save water created a sense of shared goal. Everyone avoided flushing toilets, gave up watering plants and letting cars accumulate dirt for months.

“At the time, we knew we were running into a problem,” Mogress says. “But now it's actually worse, because we have water and we know it,” he argues.

Swimming pools in the affluent suburbs of Cape Town are insolently packed as the municipality estimates that some 31 neighborhoods do not have access to clean water, including shanty and working-class districts.

Ironically, covid improved water supply in some areas. The state of disaster decreed to allow for confinement measures also facilitated the sending of more water to promote hygiene.

If the disaster state is cancelled, the city will lose funding for these water deliveries, said municipal water management officer Zahid Badroodien.

Badroodien said the city is investing millions of rand (one rand equals $0.06) in the antiquated water infrastructure, noting that another Zero Day is “inevitable.”

But it is difficult for the city to provide a stable water supply in some areas because “funds are tied to existing projects to try and establish service in existing communities.”

“At the same time, the safety of our officials has become an issue in these areas, where I know in good faith that cisterns are stolen and our officials kidnapped, sometimes held at gunpoint,” he said.

Jo Barnes, an expert in water management at Stellenbosch University, said the city has shown poor planning for future droughts.

“Not planning for the next drought, which may be around the corner, sounds like suicide management to me,” he said.

“We are more and more people, and we have the same volume of water. So, unless we do something magical, we run towards the same problem again,” he warned.

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