Building water resilience into strategy: The Cape Town drought

Abstract

The Cape Town drought captured the world's attention at the beginning of 2018 with the announcement of Day Zero: the day that Cape Town's taps would run dry. In the eye of the storm a host of factors contributed to the panic, and rapidly falling dam levels. Politics was exceptionally conflictual, interaction between spheres of government responsible for various aspects of water supply far from perfect, with public perception and media frenzy driving a focus on matters which played a very small part in the effort not to run out of water. During this time, Cape Town was building a water strategy, specifically aimed at making Cape Town more resilient against future droughts by addressing all possible factors contributing to the drought crisis. With dams close to overflowing in 2020, the next challenge is to ensure that the strategy is implemented according to plan.