“Cape Town, home to Table Mountain, African penguins, sunshine and sea, is a world-renowned tourist destination. But it could also become famous for being the first major city in the world to run out of water.”
This was the shocking intro to an article published on the BBC’s website this week.
Munier Googled further and found more such articles published online.
There are at least eight other cities on the water crisis list: Tokyo, Miami, London, Cairo, Beijing, Sao Paolo, Mexico City and Bangalore.
Each with their own unique set of water supply problems, each with their own crisis plan.
But Cape Town could be the first to experience “Day Zero”.
It’s unthinkable. And embarrassing.
How can this be? Not Cape Town. Not the “best-run” metro in South Africa.
Not the World Design Capital of 2014.
IMAGE: We need to uphold our ‘best-run city’ SA metro status
Not the Best City voted for by The Telegraph UK’s readers for three years in a row as part of their official Travel Awards 2014.
Not the most eco-friendly city in the world, according to BBC Travel.
Not the number one city in Africa for business tourism events for the fourth year running, voted for by the International Congress and Convention Association.
Not the city with the world’s best mayor (Helen Zille in 2008).
Not the best performing province in the country, according to the Auditor General’s 2015/16 municipal audit.
The DA still boasted last year: “In the City of Cape Town, not a single cent in unauthorised or fruitless and wasteful expenditure was recorded. This is the fourth consecutive clean audit that the City has received.”
Now, this is not to say other municipalities around the country could have handled this drought crisis any better.
But with Cape Town’s excellent track record, how did we end up in this mess?
Last week, Mayor Patricia de Lille was excited to announce that a survey commissioned by the City had found aquifers that can deliver more water than initially expected.
With drilling at prime location on the Cape Flats, “we can get 150 million litres of water per day”, said the mayor.
That’s fantastic news.
But seriously. The results of this survey came out LAST WEEK?
Seven years into a drought? Four months away from Day Zero (22 April)?
Look, Munier is not trying to be negative and point fingers here. We need solutions, not accusations.
He certainly doesn’t want to throw Aunty Pat under the bus, and blame her alone for the crisis.
But how can a city that claims to be the best-run, most efficient at service delivery, and cleanest, bungle a situation so badly?
Unless it isn’t what it claims to be. And all these “awards” are just Polyfilla covering a cracking, crumbling Civic Centre.
With the De Lille saga, the squeaky-clean DA itself has claimed there is massive corruption and maladministration in its own City leadership.
DA leader Mmusi Maimane himself said the allegations against De Lille include:
* The mayor influencing senior appointments.
* Covering up losses of at least R36 million on the MyCiTi project.
* Irregular advance payments of R43 million for the chassis of Volvo buses.
These allegations date back to 2014, and somehow went undetected.
But now that the City and the party have seemingly turned on De Lille, suddenly all this dirty laundry is being aired.
It seems the DA is so desperate to get rid of Aunty Pat, they’re prepared to drag their own “clean” name through the mud.
But enough about mud, we need water. And we need solutions - fast.
We need to send out a positive message to the world that we’re on top of this crisis, so that the BBC and others don’t discourage tourists from comring here.
If the City can avert this catastrophe, the DA will go a long way to fixing its damaged image.