DA must stop political chest-thumbing over rainfall

29 June 2018

ANC commends the people of Western Cape for their great resilience under a heavy yoke of severe water restriction over the last year. Even though they have since realised their chosen leaders at Civic Centre and Wale Street do not always know what they are doing, the people decided to endure the pain of their leaders failures. The ANC therefore rejoices with the people for much needed rainfall over the last few weeks which have significantly increased the provinces water dams.

As the ANC, we however reject the DA's political-chest thumbing which is suddenly parading their failed demand water management exercise, a pathetic response to a crisis that needed nothing short of real and substantive new sources of water upply. This City's strategy has been akin to asking people to eat less, just to slow down their inevitable demise because the City woke up too late to stock new supplies. That end almost came in March.

Our people are still owed an explanation because they know that 6 of the provinces dams make up 99.6% of the provinces water supply; how hard could it have been to ring the alarm long before the damns were critical. Looking after six damns is not complicated at all. Most importantly, how did Day Zero, without any new rainfall, magically disappear into the future. Was it yet another DA tactic to strong arm national government into more money by inventing and declaring a national disaster.

If indeed Day Zero was true, Western Cape dams have a system that issues warnings whenever dam levels of any year are lower than its previous year. This means the City and Province were simply caught sleeping and they have to admit that and ask the people for forgiveness. Without the public officials accepting and explaining their failures, they are bound to repeat them.

The ANC therefore warns the City and Province not to lose a sense of urgency on water augmentation projects due to the new rainfalls. 

This Province should never find itself in an avoidable state of panic again. 

Statement issued by Faiez Jacobs, ANC Western Cape Provincial Secretary, 29 June 2018