Water crisis at last brings the DA leaders out of hiding
24 January 2018
The water crisis has been in the media for months and the DA leaders have been nowhere to be seen. They are the same leaders who are responsible for the crisis along with the water Minister of Water Affairs and Sanitation Nomvula Mokonyane. The DA and the City of Cape Town should bear the largest part of the responsibility, as they failed to implement short term mitigation strategies, once the crisis had been confirmed. The national government is responsible for bulk supply and they failed to adequately address it timeously.
The Helen Zille and Musi Maimane road show on the issue is designed to shift all the blame to the national government. COSATU called the City of Cape Town and both the provincial and national government to Nedlac to discuss this issue, when we first heard of it. The City of Cape Town and the Provincial Administration did not take the discussions seriously, which could have saved us many millions of liters of water if it was responded to timeously. They failed to do the following when the crisis was indisputable:
- Get desalination plants up and running as soon as possible, every day a plant provides water it reduces the use of rain water.
- The City did not ramp up water supply and quality from the recycling plants