Dear Diary,

Today is our ninth (or is it the 10th?) day without water, here in the Joburg suburb of Melville. Yes, I know, we’re middle class here, so we shouldn’t be complaining. Only the working class, who have lived without running water for centuries, have the right to complain. But still…

The water does come back on for a few hours here and there, so you just have to be up at 4am to have a shower, and you have to wait till midnight to wash the dishes. And you have to do it quickly because barely has the water reappeared than it starts declining to a dribble again.

Yesterday, though, and earlier this morning, there was no water, even at 4am. So, I have expanded my skills base and learnt to wash in 5 litres of the special stuff.

That’s one whole bottle, one labelled aQuellé, which I refilled at an unguarded public tap the day before yesterday. (And, no, I’m not saying where that tap is.)

It’s somewhat easier to wash in 10 litres, but I need to keep the second 5-litre bottle for things like flushing the toilet. Yes, I have a flushable toilet, which makes me middle class, so I mustn’t complain.

It’s slightly ironic, I suppose, that that bottle of water came from aQuellé, notoriously the product of a commercial farm run by a religious cult that beats children, once it has brainwashed their parents.

We’re meant to be boycotting aQuellé, and I’d love to boycott aQuellé because it’s R8 more expensive for 5 litres than the Spar water from Spar, but at this point beggars can’t be choosers.

And we’re all beggars now, aren’t we? Just like we citizens are all powerless – we have no power, ha ha, get it?

So, I wash in 5 litres of water and think of my fellow Joburgers who live in places like Alexandra, but it doesn’t make me feel any better.

I suppose I’m irredeemably middle class, and addicted to creature comforts such as hot showers, which means I’m irredeemably white, so the new mayor of Johannesburg will not be prioritising my needs. No, he’ll be prioritising the needs of the township-dwellers, whom the ANC has been failing for the past 20 or 30 years.

My thoughts thus turn, unavoidably, to that new mayor. The ANC, helped by little parties that reneged on their coalition agreement with the DA, has “reclaimed” the City of Joburg, say the headlines.

I thought that was a bit of a pity, because the DA mayor had barely had a chance to get going but she looked as if she was actually tackling some of the problems left by the ANC, which has been failing both township-dwellers and those of us who live in the suburbs for 20 or 30 years. Did I mention that? It feels like 100 years, but it’s only 20 or so – thus I comfort myself.

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At least the lights are on (for now), so I can google what the new mayor of Johannesburg has said about the triumphant return to power of the ANC, which has been failing all the residents of Johannesburg for … oh, I’ve lost count.

Funny that there isn’t much about what the new mayor said. Maybe he didn’t say much, which would be wise, because nobody believes what the ANC says any more, especially not its promises of a glorious future. It sold that future to the highest bidder, and the highest bidder has followed the money and left the country. But let’s not get bitter.

Ah, here’s some kind of statement by Joburg’s new mayor. According to The South African news website, he thanked the ANC for “trusting” him to lead the city. He’s not thanking the people of Johannesburg, note, because more than half of us do not, repeat not, trust the ANC to do anything. He thanked the “minority parties” for supporting the ANC’s power grab. Not the minority parties that didn’t support the ANC, of course. They can go to hell.

Barron’s website, whatever that is, says the mayor went on to accuse his predecessor of having “turned the city into a ‘mess’ ”. He is talking about the DA mayor, one has to assume, not his ANC predecessors in the mayoral seat, three of whom died very soon after taking office. You’d almost think there was a curse on the ANC, or that God was trying to tell them something, but the ANC don’t listen to nobody, not even God.

If he’s accusing the DA mayor of making a “mess” of Joburg, well, then, one can only laugh the laughter of despair. It wasn’t the DA mayor who, in her less than a year in power, let our water system, and our electricity system, and in fact all our systems, decline.

No, that takes years and years of neglect and funnelling money into the pockets of your cronies or just wasting it outright.

That’s on the ANC, baby. I don’t hit a pothole and think, “Oh, damn, the DA put that there.” And I don’t imagine that the inhabitants of Alexandra, spending their umpteenth year without proper housing, let alone water or electricity, or functional schools, or anything functional, look at this wreck and think, “Oh, the DA did that.”

The mayor said something about how the parties that supported the ANC’s return had engineered a “historical change”, which I think means a reversion to history, and we all know history belongs to the ANC. And that history is historic.

Shame that history is in the past. And shame the only thing the ANC can do is take us back to the past, or insert that past into the future. Who needs a future when we have such a great past?

Anyway, I can’t see more of what the mayor said. But ANC Gauteng provincial secretary Thembinkosi Nciza had a fair amount to say. Thanks to the parties who “put aside their differences” (read: probably took money, as they did in Nelson Mandela Bay) to restore the ANC to power in Joburg, yada yada, said he/she/it/they.

(I haven’t the time to google Nciza’s gender before the lights go out again. Perhaps I’ll just assume they’re a he, because the ANC doesn’t say “Time for a woman leader” if that leader is from the DA).

Nciza went on to say that “the removal of a chaotic DA-led coalition is a victory for the people of Johannesburg”. Right. I can’t see the victory for the people of Johannesburg. Looks more like a defeat. And I can’t see how the ANC’s coalition is going to be any less chaotic. It relies on the EFF, which is practically the definition of chaos.

But I’ve got to stop now, Dear Diary, because I must load up my empty aQuellé bottles and go and find some water somewhere. The water tank left by the City at my local petrol station was emptied within a few hours. You should have seen the queue!

Maybe Johannesburg’s triumphant new mayor has a little water he could pass on. Please, sir – I’ve learnt to wash in 5 litres. DM168

Shaun de Waal is a writer and editor.

Warning: This article contains satire.

This story first appeared in our weekly Daily Maverick 168 newspaper, which is available countrywide for R25.