The city’s residents would stand in lines for their individually rationed 50 liters of water each day, in fear of reaching Day Zero. According to city officials, less than 2% of the remaining water supply is actually useable.įresh in the minds of people here is Cape Town’s 2018 water crisis, which was also triggered by the previous, severe drought as well as management problems. Water levels have slowly dwindled to the point where the four dams are sitting at a combined level of less than 12% their normal capacity. For nearly a decade, the catchment areas for Nelson Mandela Bay’s main supply dams have received below average rainfall. In its Seasonal Climate Outlook, the South African Weather Service forecasts below-normal precipitation. The next several months do not paint a promising picture either.
The problem is, that kind of rain just hasn’t been coming. The Eastern Cape relies on weather systems known as “cut-off lows.” The slow-moving weather systems can produce rain in excess of 50 millimeters (around 2 inches) in 24 hours, followed by days of persistent wet weather. The prospects of meaningful rain to help resupply the reservoirs here is looking bleak, and if things keep going the way they are, around 40% of the wider city of Gqeberha will be left with no running water at all. “This is my routine, every day, and it is tiring.” “Tomorrow, those ones are empty, and I have to bring them again,” he said. His family has enough containers to hold 150 liters of water, but each day he fills around half that while the rest is still in use at home. “People who don’t live here have no idea what it’s like to wake up in the morning, and the first thing on your mind is water,” Malambile said. Without this daily ritual, he and his family would have no drinking water at all. That has left Malambile - who lives with his sister and her four children - with no choice but to walk his wheelbarrow through the township every single day for the past three months. Poor maintenance, like a failed pump on a main water supply, has only worsened the situation. On top of that, thousands of leaks throughout the water system means that a lot of the water that does get piped out of the dams may never actually make it into homes.
Like so many of the world’s worst natural resource crises, the severe water shortage here is a combination of poor management and warping weather patterns caused by human-made climate change. It had just a brief reprieve before slipping back into drought in late 2021. The wider Eastern Cape region of South Africa suffered a severe multi-year drought between 20, which devastated the local economy, particularly its agricultural sector.
That’s in around two weeks, unless authorities seriously speed up their response. Now much of the city is counting down to “Day Zero,” the day all taps run dry, when no meaningful amount of water can be extracted. Another is just days away from emptying out. There hasn’t been enough heavy rain to replenish them.Ī week ago, one dam was decommissioned as levels dropped too low to extract any actual water - its pipes were just sucking up mud. And the township is just one of many in the affected Nelson Mandela Bay area of Gqeberha city - formerly known as Port Elizabeth - that rely on a system of four dams that have been steadily drying up for months. Taps ran dry in parts of Kwanobuhle in March, and since then, thousands of residents have been relying on a single communal tap to supply their households with potable water. “Home feels far when you are pushing 70 kilograms of water in a wheelbarrow,” said the 49-year-old resident from the impoverished South African township of Kwanobuhle.
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