Drought.
According to a World Health Organization and UNICEF report from 2017, 253 million people around the world must travel at least 30 minutes to collect clean water for their daily use.
While many of those dealing with water scarcity live in rural areas, how does a major global city, with access to a number of fresh water reservoirs, end up running out of clean drinking water?
So, much of the nation – including Western Cape province and the city of Cape Town – is already putting stress on its available water resources.
By that same day in 2015, it had dropped to 78 per cent of capacity.
These facts certainly set up the backdrop for the current crisis, however there were human factors – specifically political ones – that apparently made the situation even worse, and pushed the region towards this looming Day Zero.
According to The Conversation, the Democratic Alliance, which is the Western Cape provincial government, and the African National Congress, the party that runs South Africa on a national level, have been going toe-to-toe over this crisis for some time now.
In 2015, the city of Cape Town was allocated 60% of the water from the Western Cape’s water supply system.
The department has no funding allocated to drought relief in the Western Cape next year.
As of now, without any significant improvements or assistance – either from nature or from the government – Cape Town’s Day Zero, when the city will run out of water, is April 12, 2018.