Water, water, everywhere, nor any drop to drink, bath, wash clothes, or do dishes

This is a special madness. Across the city, we wake up as early as possible to wash before the flow of water ends without warning. But that, of course, is only if you actually have running water that day. If there is a trickle, you try to wash, but maybe the water will suddenly stop as soon as you have lathered up. Now what? There is no schedule in the madness.

Even if you’re lucky enough to have a sporadic flow — and across the province many residents no longer have that for days, weeks, or even months — even on good days, the water pressure can be so low that we return to old-style bucket and dipper showers, heating hot water on the stove.

More infuriatingly, even if you pay your rates and taxes, you can’t tell if the City has deducted for when there was no water because Johannesburg is billing based on multimonth averaging to “calculate” charges. Who knows what’s going on with that...

Forget the metaphysics of the accelerating collapse of Jozi’s infrastructure. We focus on drawing water from the tap before all our neighbours beat us to the punch in drawing down a dwindling water supply. This is how societies disintegrate into the civic version of Hobbes’ “war of all against all” — neighbourhood by neighbourhood.

We rush to fill every single bottle, pot and jug in the house so we can cook, make coffee or tea, and maybe even wash clothes. It’s too bad if you have children and their mounds of dirty clothes. Meanwhile, remember to buy a load of those 20-litre bottles of water as backup.

Despite city promises about water from tankers, at least in our neighbourhood, no one has seen such a mythical creature bringing H2O to the masses. Because properties are small and close together in our suburb, transporting borehole drilling equipment would require a helicopter. No luck there.

Read more: While Joburg battles for water tankers, they’ve been failing at informal settlements for years

But even if we had a borehole, would such water be safe without installing a water purification system? The nearby Braamfontein Spruit sometimes foams from God alone knows what impurities dumped in it as it reaches the aquifer. It probably carries toxic metals and a soupçon of E coli.

Invisible mayor

Nowadays, the tap water — once it flows again after the latest broken pipe has been mended for the umpteenth time — can also deliver a slurry of brownish particulate matter. Ugh. In our home, as an experiment, we placed water in a closed jug on the kitchen windowsill for a few days. Soon enough, a bright green algae bloom appeared at the bottom of the jug. This isn’t right; this is not right at all, as Dr Seuss might have said. But, of course, our invisible mayor has reassured us that there is no crisis.

Read more: Morero denies Joburg water at ‘national disaster stage’ as DA heads to court

In the midst of the non-crisis, the plants in the garden cope as best they can. If they shrivel and die, well, that’s survival of the fittest. Serves them right for not being indigenous. If the fish pond needs topping up before the fish are condemned to gulp oxygen from the atmosphere, adding fresh water to the pond must wait. Goldfish are hardy, and maybe they’ll survive our artificially created drought. Not to worry — as the mayor soothes us, there is no crisis.

You want to clean the bathroom, toilet, kitchen floor and countertops? Spraying disinfectants is what we must be content with. Besides being highly suspect, it takes way too long to execute this kind of basic hygiene. Somewhere in Johannesburg, cholera, dysentery, or typhoid are patiently waiting to break out. But there is no crisis. Maybe we can all check into hotels to bath, as Premier Panyaza Lesufi explained he did.

This is not just some pouting, bourgeois angst. Poor people like to be clean, to do their washing, and to have decent water to drink too.

A basic supply of water is, however, a constitutionally guaranteed right. Maybe irrigating the neighbourhood golf course and bowling green isn’t constitutionally guaranteed, but having enough water to drink and cook with isn’t too much to ask, is it, especially with reservoirs at 100%? It is maddening that we must even raise such questions. But, of course, there is no crisis.

A blasé disregard for such concerns by near-invisible bureaucrats and politicians appointed to maintain, improve and expand the water reticulation system is similarly infuriating. It is their primary job to keep the existing equipment and installations in good order, to prevent breakdowns before system-wide crises happen, and to expand the system as quickly as possible. But there is no crisis.

Constraints

Yes, yes, we appreciate the very real constraints. Post-1994, the authorities have expanded coverage to millions, and in areas not previously served. There is never enough money to do everything timeously. People break things by accident or maliciously. The system is complex, and when one part has a problem, it cascades across the entire system. And, inevitably, there is the reality that the Witwatersrand is a water-scarce area and yesterday’s supply never quite catches up to tomorrow’s demand. But these are deflections from the current crisis, where the system is broken.

• Of course, demand has grown as the government promised to expand the coverage of piped water. How could they not have done so, given demands for a more equitable spread of government services? But planning for such outcomes should have been done many years ago — and then implemented.
• Of course, costs always exceed allocated budgets. That’s where rigorous financial controls and innovative funding mechanisms must be applied fairly and effectively.
• Of course, the system is complex. It has been built upon since the 1890s. And that’s why skilled leaders and managers stay ahead of the game — planning system-wide solutions before a collapse is crucial.
• And yes, of course, the Gauteng region is often water-scarce — but that is the crucial reason water can never be allowed to be wasted, frittered away in frivolous usage, mismanaged, or allowed to leak away due to poor or non-existent maintenance.

This is why managers must exercise diligence in their primary responsibility — no ducking, diving or issuing bureaucratic, jargon-filled press releases to muddy the waters about blame. Instead, what we have been subjected to is a chain of avoidance, forever passing the blame elsewhere. Of course, there is no crisis. I almost forgot.

But where have Mayor Dada Morero and his management team been in all this? Or the Joburg Water and Rand Water panjandrums? Kidnapped or abducted by aliens? Hiding out quietly on Jeffrey Epstein’s private island in the Caribbean? Oh, right, they have now scheduled site visits. But this is a real crisis, not some managerial planning exercise. All those steps should have been done long ago. People expect far better than what we see now.

Or have many citizens just given up? Where are the officials explaining what they are doing and what the schedules are for fixing things in ways normal people can understand? And who is going to be frogmarched off to some court to be held accountable for this disaster? Are tumbrils awaiting? Of course not. There is no crisis. Yes, the President has announced an emergency committee of ministers chaired by him and has promised funds in the future for the needed infrastructure, although that will mean years of waiting for such funds to be spent on new works, even as the old pipes continue to crumble away.

Not a sudden disaster

As economist Claude Baissac noted, “Ramaphosa says he will deploy ministers, task teams and even prosecutors to fix the water crisis. But this is not a sudden disaster. It has been announced in audit reports and community protests for years. The Human Rights Commission has documented towns where households have had dry taps for years on end. Johannesburg has reservoirs in urgent need of repair, loses almost half the water it buys through leaks and illegal connections, and replaces only a handful of kilometres of ageing pipe each year.”

Read more: Ramaphosa deploys ministers before Sona to ‘urgently’ tackle Joburg’s water crisis

We ordinary folks, of course, are angry and, yes, there will undoubtedly be more protests. But we line up for temporary water supplies and hope the situation improves. Some day.

Read more:

• Desperate measures — Joburg residents pushed to the brink after days and even weeks without water
• Civil society body calls for Joburg’s water crisis to be declared a national disaster
• Nobody cares, rage Joburg residents as water outages worsen
• Most of Joburg without water as multiple systems fail

More than 100 years ago, the sociologist Émile Durkheim popularised the concept of “anomie” — the sense of “giving up”, where individuals increasingly feel disconnected, disoriented and aimless. It can lead to social instability, crime, and, in extremis, even suicide. Well, we know there is a problem, we are clearly disoriented by it, and crucially, we feel unable to do much about it.

Maybe we haven’t been driven to suicide yet, but adapting to a worsening water situation does nothing for our physical or mental health — individually and collectively. We may now get a WhatsApp note every day from a councillor about the problem, but it does not reduce feelings of helplessness when the accompanying chart shows one’s suburb is in the disaster’s red zone.

Praying for rain

People may therefore conclude that voting for change — or improvements — is a waste of collective time and energy. Voting is for fools. Politics is without redeeming virtues. And politicians are in it for themselves, not for us. But rather than massed street protests, people largely seem to have elected to stay home, to sulk, to engage in angry social media postings, while trying to carry on as best they can. They haul buckets of water from a neighbour’s borehole, or perhaps from a nearby house of worship. They buy potable water — if they can afford it. Or they do without, waiting for tankers that never arrive, and praying for rain.

Adding a home water backup storage system, just like adding a solar power installation, costs money that many do not have.

But those are just temporary fixes when the government abrogates its obligations and promises. It is a local government’s job to supply water, electricity, some policing and to remove rubbish and sewage. That is one key reason local governments are within the reach of citizens via periodic elections when officials fail to do their part. But, with water, Gauteng’s government bodies have been out to lunch — beyond accountability.

Instead, we limp along. Citizens’ beliefs that the government will not solve the underlying water problems grow. Perhaps a crisp slogan encapsulating our fears and hopes — a “liberty, fraternity, equality” or “bread, peace, land” — may finally awaken the powerful from their slumber so they embrace their urgent but unmet tasks. Or might something else replace them? The careful 19th-century French politician and social analyst, Alexis de Tocqueville, in thinking of czarist Russia, argued that the most dangerous time for a bad government is when it attempts to reform. Will this become true here as well? DM