Everyone knows the saying that the next world war will not be waged due to policy differences or territory, but due to a lack of water. Equally important is the fact that water cannot be reused once there is nothing left. It will be too late to cry about it.
There are various reasons, apart from the low rainfall, for why South Africa is currently experiencing a water shortage. There are not enough storage dams, the fast rate at which the population is growing, the influx of millions of immigrants from higher up in Africa and excessive water wastage due to leakages resulting from poor maintenance to infrastructure.
Without water, there can be no life. South Africa is a water-scarce country, one among the 30 driest countries in the world.
South Africa already finds itself in a water crisis due to the long drought and action must be taken immediately to avoid a countrywide Day Zero. It will be absolute catastrophic for the country.
We need to continually plan and work on building new storage dams and alternatives, like desalination, should form part of our planning. Underground water must be extracted carefully and, where possible, water must be purified so that it can be reused.
It has long since been customary in dry regions to catch water in storage tanks. South Africa has 17 million households and these must be seen as part of the solution to the water problem.
Every house should be provided with a water storage tank and new building plans that do not make provision for such a tank should not be approved.
Approximately 3 million RDP houses have been built over the past 25 years. A 5000-litre water tank should have been installed at each and every one of these houses. If rain were to fill the RDP houses' water tanks just twice a year, it would be nearly equal in quantity to all the water in the Churchill Dam in the Eastern Cape.
At present, a 5000-litre water tank costs approximately R4600, VAT inclusive. Every year, the Department of Waterworks gives millions of underspent rands back to the national Treasury while that money could have been used to accomplish the aforementioned. In 2015, R1 billion was not spent and in 2016, R827 million was underspent.
Doing this will not only be waterwise, it will also provide a much-needed injection to the economy and create many job opportunities.
