Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa will put together a team to help prepare for the possibility that Cape Town will run out of water soon, he told CNN reporter Christiane Amanpour in Davos, Switzerland, this week.
“Climate change is a reality,” said Ramaphosa, in the interview on Thursday.
“If people around the world, specifically South Africa, ever thought that climate change is just a fable or a fiction, we in South Africa as regards Cape Town are now seeing the real effects of climate change.
“We’re facing a real, total disaster in Cape Town which is going to affect more than four million people.
“And I’m going back home and I’m going to corral as many people as possible to put our heads together and see exactly what we should be doing, not only in the immediate term, but also in the long term.
“But in the immediate term, we’ve got to make sure that we bring water to the people of Cape Town without any fail.”
The City of Cape Town has predicted that Day Zero – when most taps will be switched off – will occur on April 12, as it gears for even stricter water rationing from February 1.
The permitted potable water consumption amount per person per day has been reduced from 87 litres to 50 litres and people in the city who can afford it are starting to stockpile bottled water.
