South Africa's water disparity - 20th April 2022

Only four years ago, South Africa's Cape Town was parched, with water supplies almost disappearing due to severe drought. The picture is different today, with the city's water reserves almost at capacity and private swimming pools full once more.

However, things couldn't be more different in the city's most populous and impoverished township, Khayelitsha, where water scarcity is ubiquitous.

Resident, Shadrack Mogress claims things are worse now than during the four year drought.

Shadrack Mogress: But it is actually worse than that. Because we do have water and we know that. We do have water. But it happens worst that it happened when there was a drought.”

The only sources of water in townships such as Khayelitsha are those linked to the council built community toilets, from which residents like Sandile Zatu and their families have to fetch their daily supply.

Sandile Zatu: “We have no choice but to wake up in the morning and try to fill your bucket as much as you can.”

According to the World Bank, South Africa is reported to have the world's highest rates of economic disparity, worsened by racial inequality.

Throughout the pandemic, Cape Town city council supplied the townships with water to promote the washing of hands but this has halted.

City authorities' representative Zahid Badroodien claims that the influx of illegal settlements is to blame as it is impossible to meet demand.

Zahid Badroodien: “During the period of Covid 19, at least 17 new illegal informal settlements have been erected across our city, in the space of a few months, seventeen new illegal informal settlements. And the city then, is expected to provide basic services to those settlements, which is difficult to do.”

However, with rural to urban migration increasing and future droughts inevitable, calls for the installation of basic infrastructure are yet to be addressed.

Here's Stellenbosch University's community health agent Jo Barnes.

Jo Barnes: “Part of that is outside the control of the city but this has been going on for the last 30 years and I’ve actually seen very little forward planning to cope with these people. It seems to me, and I hope I’m not attributing something to them, but it seems to me as if they thought if they just leave it alone and let them settle where they were, and it is unpleasant, that they will go back."