Day Zero and The Middle-Class Privilege

 

In 2017 in Cape Town, South Africa, residents were bracing for Day Zero. Day Zero sounds like the title of a dystopian novel, but for the city's citizens, it was a real-life nightmare. It refers to the day in which the city's dam levels would hit 13.5% capacity, and most taps would shut off (https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-2427.12899). Cape Town's perpetual droughts have been worsening with global climate change, and a particularly dry year combined with governmental mismanagement of water resources culminated in the nearing prospect of a dry tap, and a 25 litre per day water ration for each citizen to. Thankfully, Day Zero was never reached, but the prospect of its dawn and the extreme water conservation efforts in preparation provide an insight into water inequities within the city.

This National Geographic video helps give an introduction to what daily life was like during the water crisis:

"most of us in the black townships, we get a lot of people that must fetch water 15 km away from their houses. We've been living in day zero for many years" - Zama Timbelay

The crisis gained international media attention, and people from all over Cape Town have shared their experiences. I read a Time article written by a Capetonian Aryn Baker, a white resident of a more affluent area of Cape Town. She describes the extreme lengths her family goes through to properly proportion their rations of water, including limiting showers to 2x a week and using grey water to flush toilets. She describes a strategy also talked about in the article ‘Day Zero’, Hydraulic Citizenship and the Defence of the Commons in Cape Town, by Steve Robins, in which middle and upper class water users have used their swimming pools as personal reservoirs. Robins further details this strategy, describing the glaringly prevalent privileges demonstrated by wealthy water users. "many middle-class residents in the historically white suburbs sought to go ‘off the grid’ by purchasing water tanks, boreholes and using their swimming pools as water reservoirs. At the same time, new ‘water facts’ surfaced, revealing that while residents in impoverished informal settlements used only 4.7 per cent of the city’s water, middle class Capetonians in the suburbs used over 70 per cent." Baker also describes the crisis in a similar manner, likening her search for a composting toilet to how her "hippie friends living in the country do it". This experience serves as a stark contrast to Timbelay's experience in black townships as he describes it in the National Geographic video, where these conditions are normal and expected. From looking at firsthand accounts of Cape Town's water crisis, the social inequities drawn very nearly along racial lines serve as just a small reminder that governmental projects to decolonize water infrastructure haven't worked. Those with more resources will always be able to find ways to adapt to a crisis, while those without bear more of the burden.

The mismanagement of water resources in Cape Town leading up to the crisis shows clearly governmental priorities and where they lie. The article Beyond Day Zero: insights and lessons form Cape Town, urges that the government diversify water resources in the future, and invest in groundwater, desalination and wastewater recycling strategies as a buffer. The authors accuse the clear lack of planning to be financially motivated: when presented with the option to diversify water sources in 2007 (a solution that would have likely prevented, or at least mitigated the crisis), policy makers opted instead for a cheaper, demand-based conservation strategy. This decision was made in the context of a city in which many of its residents don't have reliable access to water in a regular year, much less in a crisis year, and I wonder if choosing to diversify water assets at the time would have increased water supply levels overall, potentially giving greater access to water-insecure citizens year-round.

Resources:

https://doi.org/10.1080/03057070.2019.1552424
https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-2427.12899
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10040-019-01979-0
https://time.com/cape-town-south-africa-water-crisis/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XxZAqswJfL4