Over the years I’ve written and broadcast about daily life in Cape Town. It’s something that I have let go of more recently, but I’m determined to reclaim the practise. In this newsletter I share some reflections on this winter’s heavy rainfall, and what this means for the beautiful people who inhabit this city.
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A couple of weeks ago I drove around Cape Town city centre. The rain was torrential, so much so that roads on the mountain slopes resembled rivers. Rain does not carry the same sense of misery for me that it used to, but rather a complex mix of relief and fear. The water crisis of 2017/2018, where Cape Town came very close to being the first major city to run out of water1, has left me with a sense of gratitude for water that I cannot shake! I almost always end up playing Simphiwe Dana’s “Mayine” (Let It Rain) at some point on a rainy day.
Cape Town was extraordinarily resilient during that time. People who could afford enough water to bathe with* would save that water to refill cisterns with a little bleach added. I knew people who put their house plants under their hanging laundry so that they could receive the precious drips. At the height of the crisis we were asked to restrict our usage to 50 litres per person per day. Innovations abounded, with rainwater harvesting tanks going into many a garden, to ensure that dam water was spared. Those of us who live on the Cape Flats became acutely aware of the Cape Flats Aquifer and the vital role it plays in urban farming. Anyone with a clean car was treated with deep suspicion, and commercial car washes established low-water methods using rainwater so that they could stay in operation. As a city we reduced our usage from 540 litres per household per day to 280 litres2!
The relief of rain is short lived though, as when floods do strike as a result of heavy rain, affecting predominantly poor households who have had to resort to constructing houses on flood plains, people lose their belongings, sometimes their homes, and children are put at risk of waterborne diseases. Local organisations such as Gift of the Givers work tirelessly to lessen the impact. Gift of the Givers is an organisation which elicits great pride in the heart of many a South African. They did extraordinary work and raised massive amounts of money to help public hospitals clear their surgical waiting lists after the first and second waves of Covid.
During the pandemic, I was stuck in the UK from March 2020 until July 2021. I was struck by South Africa’s resilience when I returned. Local manufacturers who had previously made clothing, for example, turned their hands to making masks and scrubs within weeks. Locally made, well designed Perspex screens were easily accessible to retailers, and signage companies got to work to make necessary adjustments to public spaces. You couldn’t move for hand sanitiser dispensers! The Cape Town International Convention Centre became a well-run field hospital able to treat 1502 people within ten weeks3. At Woodside Special Care Centre, a place very close to my heart, staff slept in for weeks at a time to keep vulnerable residents protected. South Africa was far from perfect, but we made a very decent, communal effort.
South Africans are remarkably resilient, of this there can be no doubt. Organisations such as Gift of the Givers show the extraordinary skills and goodwill of some truly dedicated people which come to the fore when crisis strikes. Resilience isn’t something to be admired so much as commended. Resilience is often borne of hardships which a community should not have to face in the first place. It is a word of which to be wary. South Africa is so capable of weathering so much hardship with ingenuity and perseverance. We are experts at doing more with less. But people are tired.
As the climate crisis worsens, it’s important for other countries to learn lessons from South Africa. We already face many of the challenges which the climate crisis will bring to much of the world in the future. In turn, the question for South Africa is whether we can reduce our shocking income inequalities and improve our environmental regulations to enable ordinary South Africans to weather the storm.
*hundreds of thousands of Capetonians don’t have piped water in their homes due to staying in ‘informal settlements’ or ‘backyard dwellings’
- Frontier Economics. Lessons learned from the Cape Town water crisis. Accessed September 6, 2024. https://www.frontier-economics.com/uk/en/news-and-insights/articles/article-i9164-lessons-learned-from-the-cape-town-water-crisis/#
- Booysen MJ, Visser M, Burger R. Temporal case study of household behavioural response to Cape Town’s “Day Zero” using smart meter data. Water Res. 2019;149:414-420. doi:10.1016/j.watres.2018.11.035
- Bulajic B, Ekambaram K, Saunders C, et al. A COVID-19 field hospital in a conference centre – The Cape Town, South Africa experience. African J Prim Heal Care Fam Med. 2021;13(1):1-9. doi:10.4102/PHCFM.V13I1.3140