The crowd noise dims as the skinny man strums his guitar, with closed eyes and a wide, beatific smile.

 

For a brief moment in the gathering crowd, all the day’s worries disappear, even though he’s singing about the End of the World:

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Why do the birds go on singing?
Why do the stars glow above?
Don’t they know it’s The End of the World
It ended when I lost your love.

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Several meters away, a trio of young Capetonians stand and watch the man. They share his eyes, his pointed chin. As they watch him performing in the square, the woman in the middle beams. "We're family," she mouths.

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This is Faldielah Fakeh, a 36-year-old professional and single mother. She lives with her father in Sea Winds, a lower-income neighborhood whose average household consumes 7 kl/month, or about 62 gallons a day. In contrast, Americans use about 90 gallons of water per day each.

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At home, the Fakehs are feeling the crisis in almost every room. Faldielah’s kitchen tap spouts a trickle of water so thin it can take minutes to fill up a large glass. Water pressure in the shower is good, but it takes ten minutes to reach a tolerable temperature, depleting her household of their tiny tariff-free allotment. She keeps a bucket to catch as much as she can.

 

The Fakehs have felt the water crisis longer than families in other households, because the rising costs affected them earlier. Last year, a pipe burst outside of their home. It took Fakeh’s father several days to notice the underground pipe had burst; he alerted local authorities, but it took them several weeks to come out and fix the pipe.

 

Soon after, to their surprise, the family received a water bill of 15,000 rand [around $1,300 USD].

 

“How am I gonna pay that?” he says. “I’m a pensioner. I make 1500 rand [$125 USD] per month.”

 

As bad as the restrictions have gotten, the Fakehs still have taps in their home. Before she moved back in with her father, Fakeh spent four years in an informal settlement. The current crisis has made her reflect on that time.

 

“What’s interesting is that in the informal settlements, people haven’t really felt these effects,” she says. That’s because most settlement residents get their water from several taps that supply dozens of households at a time.

 

For them, the consequences of a potential Day Zero—which, if reached, would require Capetonians to travel to “collection points” for an allotted 25 liters per day—are far less dramatic than for wealthier citizens, most of whom had never collected water before the draconian 50 liter limits pushed many towards collection sites. Whether the taps in others’ homes are turned on or off, they will have to queue.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Crises can be revealing, and most agree that the drought has revealed many aspects of Cape Town’s character. The city hosts vast inequities: How you feel the crisis depends on where you live, where you go, and whom you’re responsible for. Most of all, it depends on how much money you have.

 

But citizens of all demographics are also rallying to the cause: Across all the suburbs, average single household water use has dropped 6,000 liters per month since last April, according to our analysis of average monthly water use data. The residents studied reduced their overall water use by 39%.

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We spoke to a myriad of Capetonians, all along the socioeconomic spectrum. They've been meeting the crisis in different ways.

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“Where are we? The best flower market in all of Cape Town." 

The family of Faldelah Dixon has lived in the Cape Flats ever since the 1970s, when apartheid officials forced her family out of the city’s famous coloured area known as “District 6.” Dixon, now 46, commutes over two hours a day back to the city to sell flowers to city residents, wedding planners and tourists.

 

Dixon says the water crisis has impacted her in ways she didn’t expect. “I’m Muslim,” she says. “We’ve got to clean ourselves before we go to pray...So we have to use water five times a day.”

 

But at the same time, she views the crisis as a test of faith. “For us, water is a gift from god,” she says. “So you must value what God gives to us so that we don’t, in the long term, run out. If we abuse something like that, in a couple of years, it’s finished.”

 

Chiefly, Dixon says, the drought is impacting her profits. People have less water at home to keep flowers nourished. So fragile water-intensive species, like roses, aren’t selling.

 

But at least she still sells lots of Proteas. The signature flowers of Cape Town, these sturdy, spherical plants also have relatively low water needs, requiring only a trickle per week; thus, they appeal to symbol-loving tourists and conservation-minded Capetonians alike.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Natalie Brandreth is always moving. The frizzy-haired coordinator of UCT’s campus radio show spends all day wrangling boisterous university students into soundproof rooms, pausing only occasionally to smoke a cigarette on the marble steps outside. Yet Brandreth has also built her career by paying attention— to her students and to the airwaves. When the government began its messaging about Day Zero, she listened with a critical ear, thinking past the news stories to the conduct of those driving them.

 

She is not impressed.

 

“You go on social media, you hear news reports about people getting ill, [and] there’s no confirmation,” she says. “From the health department side, from the government side, you’ll get media reports saying the water quality has been tested and it’s fine.”

 

Brandreth has reason to be wary. In February—the same month school started—there was a two-week period where “more than half of the station was sick,” she says. “Full on gastro, diarrhea, the whole thing.”

 

“People don’t really have anything specific to pin their illnesses on,” she continues. “But the common denominator seems to be the water.”

 

Brandreth and her students share the beliefs of many non-white people in Cape Town and surrounding areas. They think the water crisis was a test for the Democratic Alliance, the provincial government that rules Cape Town’s encompassing province. And they believe the D.A. failed.

 

The party has maintained an uneasy majority in the province largely because it’s seen as better than the nationally ruling African National Congress at delivering services, like electricity and water. But the water crisis has thrown a wrench in that narrative.

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At first, Semira Luna and Kim Bredenkamp, a 20-something couple from Mitchell’s Plain, both believed Day Zero was a scam, a ploy fabricated by local politicians. Exaggerating the stakes of a crisis— and their role in fixing it— “is always something they do, especially around election season,” she says.

 

Now, Luna believes the crisis is real. But she still thinks the Democratic Alliance is approaching it from a political standpoint, not a humanitarian one. While the crisis hasn’t been especially difficult for her family—they have a huge rain tank installed outside their house, and have always been conservative water users—she says what’s happening to others within her community is “sad,” and should be addressed.

 

For instance, people used to knock on her door begging for food. Now, she says, “they ask for water instead. And we do give them water… What else can we do?”

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So they scrimp and save water, drop by drop. Says Archie, “We set our lives around how stuff is implemented.” They use their bathwater for the garden, their sinkwater for the washing machine. They installed a rain tank. The community, too, has rallied around conservation efforts. Lisha’s school recycles toilet water and has launched a mini public awareness campaign of its own.

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The Natus family’s mindset echoes those of many other lower-income Capetonians: “With every circumstance comes sacrifice,” Archie says. “So we work together in trying to cope.”