Determined to do something about it, van der Heever recorded a message on WhatsApp and sent it to around 300 people she knew in East London.
People in East London were asked to donate two five-liter jugs of water to Cape Town and offer access to drop-off points across the city.
Van der Heever also came up with a savvy plan to carry the water to Cape Town, using her inside knowledge of the farming market.
In less than 24 hours, van der Heever’s WhatsApp account was inundated with requests from people and companies wanting to donate water bottles, farmers pledging to transport water on their empty Cape Town-bound trucks at no charge, and businesses offering their premises as drop-off points.
Every time someone sends me a message on WhatsApp, by the time I finish reading it it’s already moved down another 100 messages," van der Heever said.
Drop-off points were organized across these cities, with the help of a nationwide disaster-relief charity, Gift of the Givers, which just launched the "Water 4 Cape Town" campaign on social media with the help of van der Heever and others.
"We started a drive to transport donated water to our Cape Town branch for distribution to old-age homes, as well as Water Shortage South Africa," Boucher said, referring to the drought-relief organization.
"We don’t have enough space to store the water coming down," van der Heever said.
van der Heever said.
As the campaign gets bigger, a Twitter account dedicated to #Water4CapeTown is now urging people to change their profile photo to keep raising awareness Imtiaz Sooliman, chairman of Gift of the Givers, told CNN the overall water collection across South Africa topped 50,000 five-liter bottles, and donations are starting to come from abroad, including the US.