Effective communication – or the lack thereof – came under the spotlight at the civil-society led Water Crisis Solutions Summit at the UCT Graduate School of Business on Saturday.

Hosted by the SA First Forum, the summit included academics, water and sanitation experts, trade unions, the private sector, government entities, and citizens.

SA First convenor Adv. Rod Solomons said the summit’s purpose was to move beyond “bogeyman terms like Day Zero” and “rationally share and debate issues, not confuse people” to “get a sense of what can and should be done”.

It was held just days after Splash, South Africa’s latest mascot for water saving, was unveiled, to ridicule by South Africans online. Splash, a human-shaped white droplet with lurid orange underpants emblazoned with a reminder to save water, was unveiled by the Department of Water and Sanitation on Thursday. As a communication strategy, the mascot was described by an audience member as “fiscal dumping”.

But the Summit’s discussion was not focused on Splash; rather, it centred on:

• solutions that can or are being implemented, and
• how these can be communicated more effectively.

Among the speakers were UWC’s Dr Kevin Pietersen, of the Institute for Water Studies; Caron von Zeil, best known for Reclaim Camissa under the Cape Town Partnership’s Sustainable Water project; James Brice, a communications and environmental sector consultant; Moegsien Harris, former Deputy Director of the Cape Chamber of Commerce and Deputy CEO Overberg Water Board; Elton Davids, President of the Cape Town Sports Council, and Nazeer Sonday, co-ordinator of the PHA Food and Farming Campaign.

Clarity and transparency

Pietersen told Daily Maverick there had not been enough transparency from all spheres of government and this had to change. First, he said, technical reports must be made readily available to the public on a wide scale, so that they can see what is informing decisions at various levels.

“The Water Research Commission is a good model,” he said [disclosure: Pietersen works for the WRC]. “All reports, although they are very technical, are at least available so that members of the public can access them. But in other spheres [of government], you have no idea what has been discussed in recent times or what has occurred in chambers.”

Related, he said, was the issue of simply “rehashing old solutions” to water management, some of which dated back as far as 2007. Effective use of groundwater, for example, would require drastically updated models and this, he said, should be “updated in the public domain”.

Greater transparency in decision-making would prevent “push[ing] one option”, he said.

Brice, a communications consultant in the environmental sector, built on this, saying communication had been “dismal” around the water crisis. Yet it needed attention urgently as “communication is the vessel we receive our leadership in”.

Communication to date had allowed for a critical lack of trust, he argued.

Like Pietersen, Brice called for reliable reporting – such as independent audits of augmentation projects – to be made available to the public.

“The City of Cape Town can learn a lot from [the mistakes of] corporate South Africa,” he said.

Industry

He also argued for a wider, more long-term understanding of the impact of the drought. Rates and taxes are an important part of City revenue, but a) a drop in property prices means a flip towards a buyer’s market, and b) migration increases water demand. “Cape Town is completely unprepared,” he said.

Moreover, he added, there has been an over-emphasis on the impact of the drought on the agricultural sector, with a secondary emphasis on tourism, but little discussion on the longer-term economic impact on other sectors if Cape Town “feels a pinch in the pocket”.

At the same time, he argued, a lack of communication had glossed over the far greater crises of other, smaller communities elsewhere, leading to a generalised lack of understanding of the scale of the problem. The bulk of private tank installations were being done in rural communities in the Eastern Cape, he said. “Rural communities have been living with this every day for decades. It’s a much bigger debate.

“We are so far behind in learning the skills to distil this very complex, historic, multifaceted debate to bite-sized chunks that people can digest and appreciate. We need to manage the tools we have and learn the communication skills [to get that across].”

Adding to Brice’s concern about the impact on multiple sectors, Cape Town Sports Council President Elton Davids said there was a critical lack of discussion around the impact of the water crisis on sport. One football field uses around 134,000 litres of water in a normal week. Under current water restrictions, this has been cut to 38,000 litres. But sports such as softball, baseball and cricket are all suffering and are being forced to re-evaluate their normal seasonal events, as is swimming (as much as 60,000 litres can be required to fill a swimming pool).

At best, said Davids, if championships and similar events can be held at all, event costs and logistics are increased and the social impact is significant. Otherwise event frequency is decreased and facilities are less available. The risk of illness is also higher due to poorer hygiene.

“It’s a budget item nobody has planned for,” he said.

Sports that are not normally high on the news agenda are also affected, such as “fancy pigeons” which uses 30 litres per day just for the birds. Then there is the closure of bowls clubs: just three out of 25 are still active, which impacts on an active schools programme in several economically disadvantaged communities.

Just on the Easter weekend there will be netball, sailing, tennis, darts and volleyball events, said Davids – not to mention the Old Mutual Two Oceans Marathon, which will require careful planning of water tables.

Environmental support

Sonday, discussing the much-contested planned developments on the Philippi Horticultural Area, said there had not been enough communication regarding food security at the Cape. The emphasis was too often on the effect of the drought on viticulture, he said.

“However, a key challenge is that many people in Cape Town do not know where their food comes from.”

Paving over the PHA would deprive farmers of a sustainable groundwater resource, increase the burden on already strained agricultural water sources, and force food prices up as food would be trucked in from further away. It was essential that citizens were aware of this, Sonday said.

Von Zeil, for her part, argued for clearer communication of the role of ecology in long-term sustainable planning – and to re-evaluate the information at hand. “The national economy is owned by ecology,” she said.

Currently, she argued, much of the local ecological environment is “incredibly unhealthy” and there is an urgent need to “integrate and close those loops”.

“There is a valuable opportunity to recalculate the data,” she said. DM

Photo: Residents of Cape Town collect drinking water in the early morning from a mountain spring collection point in Cape Town, South Africa, 31 January 2018. EPA-EFE/NIC BOTHMA