Paani da...crisis in the land of Elon Musk, Charlize Theron and Trevor Noah & coming soon to a city near you.
{Though water is chemically symbolized as H2O but the way it is getting available less and less, soon it will be written as H ? O cause only that much of an amount will be sadly left and maybe available in the future.}
And now, for a bitter irony.
South Africa is right now amidst the bitter most drought they’ve ever faced leaving one of their biggest dam looking like a post-armageddon dystopian desert just like in MadMax movies, the one now helmed by Furiosa aka Charlize Theron, a native of this rainbow nation. All the other lakes have dried up so much so that they appear as a Martian landscape, a place for which the other famous personality is aiming to reach for and who also belongs to this great nation, Elon Musk. And both are currently far away from their native birth place and hopefully, if the situation goes south, no pun intended, they will along with other famous South Africans will rise to the occasion and come down to help their native brothers and sisters.
Meanwhile, the “Day Zero” when Cape Town, the second most developed metropolis and a highly affluent city of South Africa is set to turn off its water supply for all its residents officially as per the non-availability of water in its dams and lakes has been thankfully getting pushed back several times first to May and now to July 15, 2018. All this thanks to the vigilant actions and concern of the citizens and authorities alike for the coming inevitable and impending crisis of non-availability of drinking water. This latest reprieve, though a slight and for a short term has arrived thanks to the many fruit growers using less of the water annually allocated to them and thus making more water available and also due to some other water re-routing and conservation techniques and measures undertaken at a war-footing by the South African authorities.
But there’s only delaying but no denying that come summer, about four million people in the city of Cape Town, the gateway to South Africa may have to stand in queues surrounded by armed guards to collected rationed drinking water for themselves. And all this has come about due to the fast rising population and a record drought more so exacerbated by the fact and not fiction called ‘climate change’. This dramatic urban crisis is though a new one for the millennial generation but nothing new for the previous ones. Although even the older generation is a tad bit stunned as to the spread of this drinking water problem all over the globe and not just restricted to their own nation.
The question that always dominates in both the hemispheres annually whenever summer season comes around is “how would people make water accessible for them and prevent anarchy” since water is the most precious entity on this planet. Forget Trade Wars or even Star Wars, it’s time for Water Wars to erupt. What is happening in Cape Town is just an ominous sign of things to come as a shutdown of this magnitude that will be imposed upon such a cosmopolitan city had been till now almost inconceivable by anyone, anywhere.
Just ask the current mayor of the city Patricia de Lille as to the ever rising ramifications of this disaster which has pushed her to order the police as well as soldiers to form water-theft patrol groups and keep a check at natural springs, lakes and also shops within the city where people might try to barge in and take more than what they are supposed to or the worst case scenario, water mafia trying to make a quick buck by taking advantage of the gullible citizens by selling them water at high prices, scenes seen mostly in third world countries and not within a G-20 nation.
Isn’t it unbelievable but along expected lines that washing cars, filling swimming pools and watering gardens in both houses and hotels have been now expressively denied by the South African government. Also, they have heightened their vigilance in the lookout for unscrupulous traders trying to smuggle in water and then selling it illegally. The government has now allowed only 25 litres of water per person and only 4 minutes of shower time. The households round the city too are naturally forced to take many such similar steps to reign in wastage of any water and make sure that they are able to re-used and re-utilize the same water once used for one activity, for other activities as well. Life as we know is becoming even more difficult here particularly for the rural areas and the poor people in there.
The reason behind such a drastic fall in water availability is the El Nino phenomenon which has been keeping moisture winds away from this place since the past few years though geographically such an activity on a prolonged basis is never ever supposed to happen but then again so wasn’t global warming but it is happening nonetheless and hence such harsh and extreme weather events worldwide.
In my next article, I will discuss, the Top 10 cities round the world about to face such grim and menacing situation very soon.
Watch this space for more!!!