It appears citizens are largely heeding the call to “beat Day Zero”, the date reservoirs are expected to have shrunk so low authorities will have to shut off taps in the city’s homes, forcing people to line-up for water at 200 collection points.
At the start of February, the city asked residents to use only 50 litres or less each per day, and provided an online water calculator to help people work out how to do that.
The coastal city of about 4 million people has now cut its consumption to 526 million litres per day, about half the more than 1 billion litres used two years ago, Neilson noted.
“If we continue to work as a team to lower our consumption to 450 million litres per day, as required, we will become known as one of the most resilient cities in the world,” he said.
“It is going be a part of what we term the new normal,” she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation, adding that other municipalities in South Africa would need to conserve water too.
Councilor Limberg said water was a basic human right, and local government had a responsibility “to ensure access”.
He and others said the central government had been too slow to declare the water situation in the Western Cape a national disaster – a move it finally made on Tuesday.
“The political squabbling has resulted in paralysis of responses and planning to deal with the water crisis,” said Mavhinga of Human Rights Watch.
“There is knowledge in South Africa on the ground level, but it comes down to politicians who have to put the stamp of approval on these things,” he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation after visiting Cape Town.
Councilor Limberg said Cape Town had suffered from unreliable weather, which was out of line with predictions by the South African meteorological services and related to global warming.