A resident washes a pair of shoes in a bucket of water in the Imizamo Yethu township outside Cape Town, South Africa.
Photographer: Waldo Swiegers/BloombergRisk Management
Will Cape Town Run Out of Water?
If “Day Zero” comes, the 4 million residents of South Africa’s second-biggest city will face a catastrophe.
Cape Town Mayor Patricia de Lille says she has a new reason to hate Mondays.
That’s when she gets weekly reports on levels in the dams that supply South Africa’s second-biggest city, and on how much water its 4 million residents are using. The numbers regularly show that “Day Zero”—when most taps could stop running—will probably arrive in May, a month or two before the onset of the winter rains.