In Gauteng, despite full dams, a water crisis looms as inefficiencies plague the system, and amid calls for rationing arise, political interference complicates solutions… One of the joyful luxuries after a long time away over the festive season was being back in my own shower at home. It’s not particularly special – in fact the pipes don’t work hundreds and it has a rather frustrating habit of switching off just as the water gets hot.
But living in a place where the two main dams that supply us – Vaal and Sterkfontein – are bothchock-a-block full, after two weeks in a place where it hasn’t rained since who knows when, meant I could actually shower with the shower on. Veterans of Cape Town’s water crisis will know what I mean. I didn’t have to share my shower floor with a bucket.
So I was slightly perturbed to be reminded, again, about how serious the longer-term water problems in Joburg really are. News24 publisheda reporton a meeting at which water and sanitation director-general Sean Phillips suggested there may even need to be some kind of water rationing in Gauteng by the end of the year. This came as a slight surprise because for a long time my rule of thumb has been that the Vaal Dam could get us through one completely dry year, and the Sterkfontein Dam another.
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Since they’re both full now, that should mean we’re good until around December 2027. But it seems the real problem is not how much water we have, but how much we are losing. As Phillips points out, in Gauteng the average water use is 279 litres per person per day.
In the Western Cape it’s 164. Now, despite what members of your family WhatsApp group might say, I refuse to believe that people in the Western Cape are thriftier or that people in Gauteng are cleaner.
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