The Pandemic and Prospects for Transformative Change

The Pandemic, the Global Political Economy, the Climate Crisis and Prospects for Transformative Change

Larry Swatuk, PhD, University of Waterloo

Introduction

The global response to the coronavirus pandemic reinforces three important facts about how we have organized the contemporary world of humans. First, by dividing up the world in terms of sovereign states, each theoretically responsible for its own well-being, we guarantee competitiveness, secrecy, suspicion and duplicity as the foundation of human interaction. Second, by fostering capitalism as the universal means for satisfying human wants and needs, we have embedded selfishness, greed and exploitation (of people and things) in the interest of shareholder profit (not planet or people) as a fundamental organizing principle of exchange. Third, in encouraging, over four decades, a type of capitalism that limits state involvement (in terms of regulation and direction) and nurtures company-led global economies of scale through expansion of both production and finance, we have turned the world into a casino with a few big winners and a great many losers. In this world, it is the big winners that increasingly make the rules.

In relation to the first two points, it took 2 world wars, a global pandemic, the Great Depression and numerous national revolutions to recognize that such a system needed to be managed if the calamities of the first half of the 20th Century were to be avoided. Yet, in relation to the third, we find ourselves moving in the opposite direction: away from cooperation, away from collaborative management toward those very practices that led us into world war more than 100 years ago.

It should come as no surprise, then, that China and the U.S. blame each other for the spread of the virus. It should come as no surprise that the U.S. president attempted to purchase patents, labs, and scientists related to vaccine development. It should come as no surprise that in the absence of global demand, the entire edifice of globalized neoliberal capitalism has been rocked on its heels. And, happily, also it should come as no surprise that the natural world has taken this opportunity to recover from constant exploitation, the result being cleaner air and lower GHG emissions, increasing biodiversity, forest regrowth, built up fish stocks and so on.

Without doubt, the system - of states, of capitalism - is to blame. But this system was built by and has been reinforced by us humans, billions of us. Whether you are the President of the United States stripping out legislation designed to preserve the natural environment (paradoxically, the very foundation for human life), or just a simple citizen (who pays their taxes and stops at red lights), consumer (‘my, aren’t these good inexpensive!’) or investor (‘Your portfolio is spread across a mix of A, B, C so you should be good for retirement’), we are all responsible in our different, individual ways for building and reinforcing this system. Thus, although we are not equally culpable, we are certainly accountable to each other to make things better.

Let me put this plainly: the emperor has no clothes! The corona virus pandemic has stripped away any pretence of a global economy that serves anyone but the few in their avaricious rape of the planet and healthy disregard for humanity in pursuit of pointless capital accumulation. Things must change. While I am not optimistic, in the balance of this paper I will attempt to map our way out of this dead end journey toward self-destruction. Lessons from history - not just around environmental issues or climate change - are very clear; positive social change may emerge from crisis if (i) elites and citizens are both negatively impacted either by a return to the status quo or a continuation of the post-crisis world; and/or (ii) citizens organize as social movements and civil society organizations and push elites in directions they would not normally travel, with the suffragette movement being one such example.

Back to Normal? No Thank You!

Amid all of the early clamour around the return of the welfare state (e.g. through guaranteed incomes), of collapse of the oil markets and the move ‘beyond carbon’, suddenly there has been too little conversation about embedding the social/environmental-good in a post-corona economic/social opening. While there was some public discourse around devising a ‘new normal’, about learning the lessons from covid-19 and applying them to the climate crisis, for example, ever since states have begun ‘easing out of lockdown’, the conversation has quickly flipped back, almost exclusively, to ‘getting back to normal’. Far from a new normal, it seems, ‘back to normal’ will be, in most instances, back to business as usual. And, in some cases, what will be carried forward are the least desirable elements that were put in place as emergency measures, states’ increased capacity for citizen surveillance in particular. Many people have discovered a shared humanity through the pandemic and lockdown, but the means for collective well-being are only stop-gap measures and there is no indication that they will be embedded in new and lasting policy and legislation. Worse still, civil society’s involvement in the response to pandemic has been guided in the direction of passive compliance: we, the government, will take care of you; your job is, in the words of Nova Scotia’s Premier, to ‘stay the blazes home’. There have been important interventions by the media and some civil society groups to highlight the weaknesses of society now unmasked by the pandemic (e.g. the abysmal self-management of old folks homes), and by the potential consequences of particular policy actions (e.g. isolation resulting in heightened instances of domestic violence; that shelter in place means nothing for the homeless). There needs to be much more concerted and concentrated engagement by civil society to push governments and businesses in directions they are loathe to go.

Putting People Before Profit; or the reverse?

However, without focused and consistent civil society engagement, there will be debt-rescheduling not debt forgiveness (which is good for banks and stock/bond markets, not so much for people). There will be a drastic reorganization of blue and white collar labour leading to rationalizations and job losses. Smaller and independent businesses will be gobbled up by those with deep pockets. Political debate at national level will involve an unhealthy mix of victim blaming (both national and global) and how to get people back to work. Getting economies ‘going again’ will mean a return to what we already know how to do (carbon-based; resource-intensive) and so the breather that the Earth has taken will come to an end.

To understand the potential for citizen-led post-corona action in support of humans and nature, let’s take a deeper dive into the contemporary world order.

Pre-Corona: Contradictory Forces

The pre-corona world was already deep in crisis: environmental, social, political, economic. In response to perceived causes of these crises, a set of resurgent nationalisms emerged in key states across the world’s regions: Brazil, Turkey, India, the UK, the US. These nationalist responses have been bubbling up across much of the world for some time, partly in response to 2008 financial crisis and its ripple effect, and partly in response to the collapse of a variety of North African and Middle Eastern states leading to mass migration to European destinations. The nationalist/anti-globalist response coincides with a retreat from a variety of mechanisms put in place to manage geopolitical and other aspects of world affairs. So, while the world put in place the MDGs, followed by the SDGs, as well as the Paris Agreement, too many states have struggled to meet their development and climate targets. The US federal government has pulled out of the COP process altogether while, at the same time, rolling back national legislation pertaining to environmental health and sustainability. The nationalist movement, for some reason, appears to be anti-environment with many governments, in support of their own or international transnational corporations, happily plundering indigenous lands and tropical forests (across Latin America, Africa, Southeast Asia) in support of a mythical ‘national economic growth’.

In response, numerous non-state or supra-state actors have emerged in support of global and regional environmental governance and human rights: global governance think tank/policy advice entities (CIFOR; IWMI; SEI; SIWI), UN allied entities (environmental peace building) and IGOs (FAO, UNESCO, UNDP), civil society groups/social movements in support of planetary stability (International Rivers; Global Witness), city coalitions working toward green growth, circular economies and low impact development (C40; 100 Resilient Cities). These are all positive, and stand in stark contrast to states dragging their feet on nationally determined contributions (NDCs) to lowering emissions to name just one example. Also, there are significant Nationalist-Globalist struggles over common property (the Amazon and Congo as 'lungs of the planet') and indigenous lands (oil; mines; dams; forests) that draw together all of these state, private sector and (local, global) civil society organizations in struggle not only over resources but discourses and narratives. Shaping the narrative is as important as capacity to act, when it comes to resource use conflicts.

Thus, the pre-covid world presented a highly uneven landscape. There were very poor outcomes for resources and the people dependent upon them. Self regulation is clearly not working (e.g. eco-labelling, community forest alliances, conflict minerals groups). At the same time, there is continuous roll back of environmental supports at national level by the U.S.; a sort of ‘one step forward, one step back’ set of actions by China (both nationally and where state owned enterprises are active across the Global South); and mostly negative outcomes across Modi’s India, most perniciously the concerted attempt to roll back the Forest Act which gave power to scheduled tribes to manage local forest, and the renewed fight over Kashmir. None of this bodes well for properly addressing shared, national, regional, global environmental crises and meeting the SDGs by 2030. Until the pandemic hit, CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere stood at more than 400 ppm, demonstrating an unabated upward trend over the last 50 years. At the same time, global biodiversity, for example, varied inversely with CO2 emissions. Prior to the pandemic we were well on our way to what Elizabeth Kolbert labelled, ‘the sixth extinction’. Recent figures show that CO2 emissions may drop by as much as 8% this year, primarily due to the impact the virus has had on the global economy. According to Simon Evans of Carbon Brief, in order to reach carbon neutrality, global emissions must drop by more than 7% every year of this decade. That is, some 2800 MtCO2 in 2020 alone. Can we continue on this non-carbon intensive path in the new normal?

During Corona: Madly off in all directions

As stated above, the very nature of the global political economic system has ensured a fragmented response to the pandemic. States have established their own policies and practices, in many cases mimicking one another, but not working in a seamless coordinated way. Given that the virus rises and falls at different rates around the world, early recoveries, such as that in China, have not been universally applauded but regarded with suspicion and jealousy, particularly by the U.S. The most successful models of containment have been state-directed social distancing orders (e.g. shelter in place; lockdown), shutdown of non-essential businesses (the definition of which varies from state to state), the rapid acquisition and distribution of personal protective equipment for frontline workers, the rolling out of necessary equipment (such as ventilators). Where PPEs and ventilators have been in short supply, successful states have purchased equipment from outside sources and encouraged/supported domestic industry to shift production where possible to the manufacture of needed commodities to fight the pandemic. All states have instituted some sort of waiver on recurrent costs for businesses, employees, established incentives for companies to keep paying their employees, and instituted guaranteed income supplements under a wide variety of criteria. Sweden - a small country, with a strong social welfare system, a social culture of pulling together for the greater good, and resources to commit to getting a unified message out to the public, high levels of testing and tracing - has been the sole outlier, choosing a commitment to science and technology above draconian practices of extended and total lockdowns (as have occurred in many other places). Some pundits argue that we are ‘only in the 2nd inning of a 9 inning game’ - an American baseball metaphor meant to implore us who are all tired of ‘lockdown’ that it is early days yet, and the struggle is only just underway. This reminds me of the Portuguese saying ‘A Luta Continua’ - the struggle continues - which is often followed by vitória é certa although in the case of Covid-19, victory is far from certain.

Beside the positive evidence, there are numerous examples of the steps that should not have been taken. In the ‘games nations play’ with each other, projecting power is paramount. Weakness is to be avoided at all costs. For this reason, perhaps, China was unwilling to admit that a viral outbreak in Wuhan had spun out of control. Similarly, U.S. President Trump has stated that extensive and constant testing ‘makes us look weak’, perhaps meaning a behaviour typical of a people afraid of the dark (although he himself is being tested daily). Russia, too, refused to release any data in the early days, claiming that there was no problem, though it is quite clear now that the virus is rapidly spreading. These three superpowers, are not so powerful, having armed themselves to confront not a shared threat, but to confront each other. What is the value of nuclear weapons in the face of a pandemic?

Endless forms of misinformation and disinformation have circulated in an effort to deny and cast blame on others. Mimicking the richer countries, many states across the Global South have attempted lockdowns, while others have ignored the spread of the disease and resisted lockdowns altogether. When the world requires informed and stalwart leadership, what we find are strong men posturing while putting one wrong foot (Modi’s forced exile of migrant workers) in front of another (South Africa’s ban on alcohol and cigarettes) in front of another (Bolsonaro’s claim that coronavirus is ‘a little flu’ and that Brazilian’s ‘do not catch anything’) in front of another (Trump’s recommendation to drink bleach). Clearly, denialism coupled with a hyper-masculine form of bravado are no substitutes for careful testing, tracing, monitoring, and a commitment to the common good. Indeed, evidence shows that those states with the most effective responses to the coronavirus are either headed by women and/or have strong welfare systems in place. During the Thatcher era, a strong welfare system was derided as 'the nanny state'; under pandemic, it is those nanny states that have fared best. Research by McGill professor Henry Mintzberg also suggests that women leaders, such as those in Iceland, Finland, Germany and New Zealand, demonstrate a style of leadership that is more akin to collaborative management, rather than 'the buck stops here' style of leadership by the UK's Boris Johnson, Trump, Bolsonaro etc.

Strong performers aside, what is the general capacity of governments to take effective action? Both Bolsonaro and Trump have wondered if the cure will not be worse than the disease, arguing that economic collapse will kill many more than this ‘little flu’ that one day, as Trump says, will ‘miraculously disappear’. While they both seem to be hinting at facing the full effects and somehow developing what is called ‘herd immunity’, the evidence shows that when those in political and economic power speak about ‘the economy’, it is an economy quite different from the one experienced by those most negatively affected by coronavirus. For the wealthy, their fear of economic collapse is two fold: (i) a loss of real wealth tied to the collapse of the real economy due to precipitous declines in demand for the goods and services they provide; and (ii) a loss of paper wealth tied to the financial casino of share prices. The former matters much more than the latter in terms of how the wealthy will be impacted in the long-term. Trillions of dollars in paper wealth come and go through the markets with little impact on the real world of the production and exchange of goods and services. It is this economy that the middle classes and below inhabit and participate in. In fact, as evidence of the 1990s 'Asian contagion' showed, this gambling has collapsed perfectly sound economies on the basis of the impression felt by mostly white men on Wall Street as to what forest fires in Indonesia mean for their investments.

Whereas many of us participate in the markets through investment of funds for retirement, we do not command those markets: we are spectators rooting for our team. But our team is not playing the same game as the real economy. They are hedging their bets, creating winners and losers through a herd mentality of their own. While the financial melt down of 2008 destroyed the lives of millions, those at the root of the ‘game’ emerged largely unscathed, ready to gamble again. Where many of us are hoping for a ‘new normal’ involving a world that is more socially just, environmentally sustainable, and economically equitable to emerge out of the ashes of the pandemic, those at the commanding heights of the world’s political economy will be more determined than ever to bring back the status quo ante.

The collapse of the real economy affects us all, but unequally. The lockdown in countries where the relations between citizens and the state are characterized by distrust - i.e. most of the Global South - means that people with inadequate housing cannot shelter in place; that communal cultures with lives largely lived outdoors have no where to go; that millions of undocumented people, often seasonal migrant workers, are now easy targets for state-fostered xenophobia; that those who work in the informal sector at piecemeal jobs for a daily stipend cannot work and therefore cannot survive. Literally, they cannot survive. As a colleague in Botswana said to me today: ‘We will either die of hunger [due to the lockdown and possibly a border shutdown with South Africa] or corona [if the lockdown is lifted and open borders maintained]. We better choose what we want. The sooner the better.’ In the world’s ‘rich’ countries, hundreds of millions of people teeter on the edge of economic and financial collapse. They are not the rich; they are not those making policy. For example, according to Tom Colicchio in an interview with NPR, prior to corona approximately 38 million Americans were dependent upon some form of food aid - that is more than one in ten Americans, in a country where Trump’s economic advisor, Richard Haslett, boasts ‘we have created the greatest economic system the world has ever known’. Today those who must line up for a food handout number some 80 million. If this is the case in the U.S., then just imagine what is happening in the favelas of Brazil, the townships of South Africa, the slums of India, Bangladesh, Indonesia and so on. In countries where ‘citizens’ regard the state as populated by those who rule over them, oppress them, tax them without representation or service delivery, how reasonable is it to expect either state capacity to construct a concerted pandemic response or citizens' belief in and support for ‘authority’ that has never helped them in the first place. Put differently, the pandemic has exposed the wide gulf that exists between the people and the state all over the world.

This picture is made worse by the fact that Global South economies are overwhelmingly dominated by the export of raw materials or lightly finished basic commodities for which world demand has entirely dried up. These states are being forced into the hands of international financial institutions where, without doubt, the lost decades beginning with the early 1980s' oil crisis are about to repeat themselves. In a world divided in terms of states, the response is sure to be ‘better you than me.’

Let us not lose sight of those few places and cases where the response to the pandemic has been swift, focused, and mostly effective. The comparative evidence seems to suggest that what is working to contain the spread of the virus at a national level is the same that would be needed to fight climate change at global level and better manage global and regional commons as well as support one's ability to lead a dignified life:

• Placing the collective social good above narrow self-interest (despite abiding social inequalities)
•  Strong and unwavering support for well-funded science
• A clear, unified message regarding appropriate action
• A commitment to deep engagement with the public and private sectors to ensure appropriate knowledge mobilization
• Demonstrated state (financial, technical, human, resource) capacity for delivery on promises and meeting of targets
• Clear penalties to be applied for non-adopters in a non-partisan way
• A structured roadmap for progress, with transparency in terms of benchmarking, monitoring and assessment
• Action, assessment, adjustment, more action and repeat, suggesting a commitment to the long-term while acting in the short and medium terms

What to avoid is equally clear. In addition to the opposite of the points made above, three stand out:

• Mixed messages delivered in support of narrow self-interest
•  Lack of cooperation and collaboration (leading to a sort of ‘vaccine nationalism’)
• Politicization of action (e.g. ‘Trump cheques’)

Post-Corona: A better world for all?

In critically reflecting on the potential for a better world to emerge out of the pandemic, two well-known quotations come to mind. The first is from Albert Einstein: you cannot expect to find solutions with the same tools that created the problem in the first place. The second complements the first: If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. It appears that a majority of decision-makers are armed with an old notebook and a very large hammer. Without doubt, the pandemic and our responses to it reflects our world back to us as dramatically as a Diego Rivera mural. It shows to us that the dominant narrative of an end of history and the triumph of liberal political and economic systems is wildly exaggerated. Do we want a return to this world of radical inequality, social injustice, environmental collapse simply because it is the devil we know?

There are many calling for dramatic change. The pandemic shows us that people can be mobilized in mutual support and concern for fellow citizens. It also shows the potential of the state to operate in the greater good and that many things we have been told were ‘wrong headed’ - higher taxes particularly for the one percent; free basic income; regulation especially of  ‘essential services’ - are not only possible but beneficial to people and planet alike. We have also heard extensive discussions about how to ensure that ‘shovel ready’ projects must be green growth oriented; that companies can be retooled toward a circular economy; and that states and businesses can collaborate for broad social benefit not just narrow, shareholder value.

However, on the downside, there is too little evidence that the dramatic state interventions will be anything but short term. The fact that the virus will likely cycle around the world will increase the casino aspects of the world economy, especially the financial sector. In effect we may see post-corona actually being periodic corona, so turning the global economy into a giant roulette wheel. Short term winners will emerge in different places before relapses; this plays into the casino nature of the ‘paper economy’, ensuring that Wall Street (and, yes, many of us with our retirement funds invested) will have a roller-coaster ride making those with capital able to make it by the fistful and  keeping those without, who are mired in the real economy, on tenterhooks for the foreseeable future.

The barriers to positive change are well known:

• Fragmentation: the climate crisis affects us unequally and pops up in different places as does the virus (it’s like putting out forest fires)
• Competition: the sovereign state is designed to look after itself and selfishly compete with other states; while some states learn the lessons of cooperation and collaborative governance, others prefer to stand alone
• Neoliberal capitalism: decades of deregulation have left us completely incapable of coming together in a concerted way for collective social benefit; like the climate crisis, corona is creating opportunities within capitalism as well as perils and those playing the stock market welcome to the challenge of finding a winner amid losers
• Privileging the powerful: the global system is not designed to serve the weak, be they states or people or companies; it is designed to weed them out or gobble them up
• Winners and Losers: like climate impacts, coronavirus will benefit some (those who survived by acting quickly) and harm others, so creating difficulty for coalition building since impacts are uneven

Conclusion: Where to now?

Charles Dickens published his novel, Hard Times, in 1854, at the height of the first industrial revolution, marked by, among other things, the rise of Britain as global superpower. Beneath the historical fact of British imperial power, lies the equal truth of radical inequality within this ‘developed’ society. In the novel, Dickens articulates a world of vast inequality: between the owners (Thomas Gradgrind) and financiers (Josiah Boundersby) of the means of production and those who must sell their labour power to survive (Stephen Blackpool); the interrelationship between older (the nobility, landed gentry) and newer (the state, finance and industrial capital) forms of authority; the rise of people-power through unionism as an attempt to bring the rich to heel and improve living conditions for the working class; and the many, rural and urban alike, inhabiting the margins of industrial society. As world history demonstrated, it all got worse before it got better, ending after two world wars, in the great Keynesian and global governance experiments of the 1940s, 50s and onward. In many ways, we too are enmeshed in ‘hard times’, defined in two different ways. For a majority of the world’s people, daily survival is hard time. But for the few, those who have created the world that I have sketched above, it is hard times in the sense that to survive and thrive in this world you must be hard, heartless and ruthless. In many ways, this feels like a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you are powerful and in positions of authority and believe that success requires hard-heartedness, then by definition you make it so.

Global governance emerged out of the end the 20th Century’s ‘third years war’ (1914-45), punctuated by a global influenza pandemic in 1918. The architecture rested on the notion of active states each devoted to a national social project in line with a global social project designed around openness, cooperation, and the rule of law. It was a new world arisen out of the ashes of 100 years of hard times. We abandon these instruments of cooperation at our peril. We abandon the notion of a greater social good at our peril. Forty years of neoliberalism, which ceded decision-making authority to the Gradgrinds and Boundersbys of the world, laid the groundwork not only for the spread of this pandemic, but its ability to kill the Blackpools before all else. The pandemic comes at a propitious moment. It should give us pause to consider our next move: back to the hard times of the pre-pandemic global (dis)order, or forward beyond a ‘new normal’ toward an imagined community for all. In some ways, this pandemic constitutes a reasonable test for our willingness to reflect on our current directions and to change course toward a more sustainable, equitable and just future. It is 'pandemic light' - easily transmitted but not as virulent as others of its ilk. Will we be ready when the next strain emerges? How we respond today will largely determine how well-prepared we will be tomorrow.

Those interested in transformation must seize this moment to organize as never before. We must organize on behalf of the voiceless, the (deliberately) marginalized, the poor and the homeless. We must organize on behalf of ourselves. We must enlist the media in a broad conversation about what should stay and what should go. We need a succinct assessment of state actions taken in response to the pandemic. What worked and what did not? We need to engage decision-makers in this conversation, highlighting the positives without ignoring the barriers to change. We need a clear-eyed critique of how we prepared for and responded to a threat facing us all. This moment will not last. Indeed, it feels as though it is slipping away as the websites and air waves become cluttered with talk of returning to normal. The pandemic has opened spaces, no doubt temporarily, for dialogue. We must occupy them now.

As Black Friday Approaches

Tanya Talaga delivered this year's CBC Massey Lectures. Ms. Talaga is an Anishinaabe Canadian journalist and the author of Seven Fallen Feathers. That book is available from House of Anansi Press as are the Massey Lectures, which are entitled All Our Relations: Finding the Path Forward. As a white, male of a certain age, there is a tendency to lump me into a category of 'identity' not of my own choosing that seeks to place me at a great distance from a person such as Ms. Talaga, who, on the broadest criteria - First Nations female person - is nothing like me. However obviously true this may be, one balks at attempt to draw any meaningful conclusions from this regarding values, interests, and so on. Indeed, my argument here is that such categorizations (and the ill-informed conclusions drawn from them) are particularly unhelpful at a time when what we in this world need more than anything is, as she says, a way forward together. The world is madly spinning off in all directions, and by 'world', I mean the world that is comprised of sovereign states. This sovereign notion, around for about 370 years, since the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, allows for limited collective identity and maximum inter-collective competition. That's a very long story to tell, but the quick take away is that we humans are not very good at seeing beyond the visible difference toward the shared values. Indeed, we too often impute different values based on what we see. In terms of Western and 'white', the contrast with indigenous and 'red' has been hammered into stone like some sort of Ten Commandments. Holding the chisel have been state-makers (Sir John A. Macdonald and Thomas Jefferson come to mind), capitalists of every sort, particularly those most interested in land and resources, the Christian churches, and those in command of the printed word and the moving image. And where there are state makers and capitalists, there are also lawyers, the rule of law, legislation and all manner of formalized mechanisms to codify difference and justify exploitation and marginalization. State making is boundary making in a system where the legal basis for the boundary derives from the demonstrated capacity to uphold the rules you have written. Put simply: might makes right. The construction of Canada, Mexico and the United States would not have been possible without the appropriation of all of the best lands from those who were here first.



As Tanya Talaga tells us, despite the most concerted deliberate (from annihilation to assimilation) and accidental (small pox) attempts to eliminate the 'Indian problem', First Nations peoples are still here and plan to stay here. Formal (meaning Canadian state-directed) processes are underway to explore the ways and means of reconciliation. Spurred on by the reprehensible practice of residential schools, Canada's Truth and Reconciliation Commission seems to me to be on an honorable, important and admirable mission. The rise of identity politics has provided space for social movements such as Idle No More and civil society organizations such as Reconciliation Canada to press for fundamental changes in the way First Nations are treated vis a vis what we might call 'the rest of Canada'. What is most interesting and important about these indigenous peoples' led groups and organizations is the framing of the mission. Whereas identity politics tends to divide and sub-divide, First Nations social movements set their mission within the broader context of 'Mother Earth' and of 'all peoples', so being integrative rather than disintegrative, aligning group interests with primary planetary concerns of social justice and environmental sustainability.


In my view, this offers us an opening toward not merely reconciliation but toward a different way of seeing self in relation to other. What I mean is, indigenous peoples' everywhere offer us insights into sustainable, adaptable, resilient and multivariate ways of being in the world. 'Modern' 'Western' society has demonized and derided as 'backward' not only these ways of thinking and acting but also those aspects of our own cultures and histories that smell of 'pre-modernity'. This binary not only undermines those not like us by saying we moderns are better, but, more importantly, it places our modern ways beyond scrutiny, beyond level-headed critique. As we rush from one sexy concept (e.g. innovation) to another (e.g. the gig economy), we would do well to remember that we cannot 'technologize' our way out of the disastrous and unsustainable corner into which we have painted ourselves. We cannot solve our most pressing problems (e.g. climate change) with the same tools, methods and ways of thinking that have created the problems in the first place. Just as 'more guns' will not put an end to 'gun violence', so too 'more technology' will not put an end to high mass consumption, inequitable distribution, over-production, ecosystem destruction, social dislocation, etc etc. So, what is to be done? Dare to be different.



In daring to be different, I am saying that, first of all, we must abandon the destructive binaries -- traditional/modern, backward/forward, superstitious/scientific, savage/civilized -- that not only divide us but paralyze us, inhibiting our ability to see, think and act differently. We moderns are wedded to the notion that 'development' equates to the transformation of the Earth in line with our dreams, whatever they may be. It means living apart from Nature, not within it. So when indigenous groups argue in support of 'Mother Earth', too many of us 'moderns' hear something that sounds traditional, backward, superstitious and savage. If that's how you interpret what you hear when an Indigenous group or person invokes the value of respecting Mother Earth, then it means that you aren't really listening. In daring to be different we must learn to listen and dare to question often very firmly held beliefs.



Let's be clear: there is no 'going back'. In fact, there is no such thing as 'going back', just as there is no such thing as 'going forward'. As we stand at the precipice of calamitous anthropogenic change, as we survey the disastrous social, economic, environmental and political realities of the modern world, who in their right mind would call this 'progress'? To be sure, today is different than it was yesterday and yesterday different from the day before. Millions live long and well; and millions more do not. Many of us have seen the Hans Rosling Ted Talk on global development. Without out doubt, it is compelling and full of hope. But aggregate data conceals as much as it reveals. If we juxtapose Rosling's take on development with Al Gore's data on climate or look at data tables regarding biodiversity loss or deforestation over time, or the decline of the middle class, the rise of the one percent and incidences of heart disease, obesity and diabetes in 'wealthy' countries, then we get a better sense of not only the benefits but of the (short term and long term) costs. Modernity as currently conceptualized is testing Earth system limits. Can we shift the cost:benefit ratio in favour of benefits? Can we do so by challenging the tropes of development, especially continuous growth and consumption? I think we can. Today is different than yesterday. It may be better by some measures and worse by others, but it is certainly not 'progress'. In daring to be different, we must dare to challenge conventional wisdom. As Timothy Leary once said, 'think for yourself and question authority'.



Mi'kmaw Elder Albert Marshall has developed the idea of two-eyed seeing as a viable way of reconciling indigenous 'traditional' knowledge with Western 'scientific' knowledge. I put great value in these insights. Western science is overwhelmingly about understanding first principles in order to bend systems to human needs and interests (think: Man over Nature). Such an approach acknowledges no limits. Indigenous knowledge is overwhelmingly about understanding the dynamics of earth systems in order to live in balance with them (think: humans as part of the ecosystem). Such an approach acknowledges and respects limits. Neither approach exists in perfect form, as there is a great deal of cross fertilization. Is this perhaps a way forward together? Toward not just reconciliation but respect? Western approaches to development are leading toward uniformity: of diets, of human settlement design, of socio-cultural practices. In contrast, Earth systems are simultaneously dynamic and stable -- constant change in highly predictable patterns -- where stability depends on diversity: change will bend but not break the system. As we hurtle toward Earth system tipping points due to our own hubris, is it not time to ask some simple questions: Why should everyone everywhere get their starch from only wheat and rice? Is incessant consumption the meaning of life? Rather than force indigenous peoples everywhere into pre-modern or underdevelopment narrative boxes, I think it is time we seek their advice for living within the limits set by the system; and to approach them as Elders who have much to teach us arrogant youths. In daring to be different, I think we must dare to think that if there must be binary ways of understanding, then quite possibly we've got the binaries the wrong way round.



Progress is a myth. There is then and there is now. There are challenges that we face every day that we wish to overcome. We must embrace the challenge but set it within a different narrative, a narrative of sustainability divorced from the unhelpful binary of developed and developing. The former suggests an end point; the latter a process. Together they suggest separation - one is finished with their project; the other's project is ongoing - and hierarchy, where the former will help the latter, each the author of her/his own fortune. But we are connected at every point and our life courses are mutually constituted. The challenges faced by First Nations peoples in Canada are not of their own making. They are an outcome of an historical process founded on the myth of 'progress' served up in support of narrowly conceived social and political ends. Those founding myths are part of the larger problem of modernity's dead end. It is therefore natural, in my view, that First Nations and Indigenous Peoples social movements align their interests around concern for local ecosystems sustainability and planetary tipping points. In daring to be different, we must dare to abandon the persistent myths of modernity and progress and embrace the ideas of system stability, resilience, and limits to growth. This would mean a broad shift in values, seeing 'less' as 'more', and 'more' as rightly questionable. As Black Friday approaches, let's dare to be different. Pointless consumption will be the death of us all.

Hello #WaterWars, Bye Bye #DayZero

Hello #WaterWars, Bye Bye #DayZero, Where have you gone #ClimateChaos old friend?

As doyens of the water world meet in Brasilia this week in their biannual reflection on the state of the planet’s most precious resource, I wish to reflect on the perceived value and harm attached to alarmism and hyperbole as tools of motivation for human action. Why over-statement is popular is not a puzzle: people gravitate to the ‘man bites dog’ form of headline. Why negativity in reporting and possibly also in scholarship generally triumphs – in terms of revenue, clicks, retweets, research funding and policy pronouncements – is also not a puzzle: humans depend on certainty and predictability for their security, so the prospect of dramatic change due to some ill-advised action or inaction tends to grab our attention. Put differently, we take our successes for granted. That most people on the planet sleep soundly in their beds – be they on bare earth, straw or down-filled luxury mattress – is just not interesting to us humans. Ours is a dangerous world, so we are built for fight or flight, always on the look out for the poisonous snake, the spider, the shark. We are genetically predisposed to gravitate to stories of impending doom. A bigger puzzle pertains to why some claims that ‘the sky is falling’ drive us to action, while some others do not. In a previous blog, I ruminated on the reasons why it was so difficult to get ‘us’ to act in a concerted and collective fashion on climate change. In brief, what I said there was that two of the most important factors mitigating against concerted action are: (1) people are differently impacted with some even benefiting from the general impacts (and possibly profiting from the negative impacts); and (2) the time horizons for the world’s climate #dayzero differ considerably with decision-makers’ (re)election cycles.

Recently, we have seen the reemergence of the #WaterWars discourse in state houses and think tanks around the world. One presumes that the motive behind such alarmism is to challenge world leaders to take action in order to avoid such hypothesized wars. In 1995, then-World Bank vice-president Ismael Serageldin famously stated that if the wars of the 20^th century were over oil, those of the 21^st would be over water if appropriate measures to avoid such outcomes were not taken. Being Egyptian, one can infer a primary target of his remarks to be the riparian states that share the Nile River Basin, but make no mistake: they were intended to be heard around the world. There have been two principle outcomes of this pronouncement in the intervening 23 years: one, there has been a great deal done in the service of water for peace by states, civil societies and private sector actors. Some of this was new, but much had been on-going, predating Serageldin's statement. Two, there have been a great many commentators who have ignored the latter part of his statement (the call to action), the outcomes relating to that call to action, and who have instead spilled a great deal of ink forecasting water’s existing and coming central role in (inter-state) violent conflict. One would be right to suspect that the latest iteration of the water wars narrative is designed to push influential state and private sector actors toward recognition of water’s key place in shaping the world’s climate, as well as its central role in economic production especially energy and food production. Hence, the World Economic Forum consistently announces water to be one of the top five risk factors to global peace and security, while pressing for policies and practices concerning the so-called WEF-Nexus (Water-energy-food and climate security nexus).

Choosing the high-road of charitable interpretation, one would see these as noble and laudable attempts to shift the world’s major water uses toward integrated, efficient and sustainable practices. However, it is equally important, it seems to me, to point out that sounding the alarm about water wars not only ignores the facts of widespread inter-state cooperation (so doing a disservice to all those engaged in fostering cooperation on water resources for peaceful outcomes), but simultaneously gains the attention of the wrong audience (those tasked with preparing and making war, i.e. the military) while distracting us from the greatest challenge related to water, that of ensuring adequate amounts and qualities of water for the world’s poor. To the world’s poor, water is not only life but too often it is the source of death, e.g. through vector borne disease, drought and flood. Since those with the guns and the money also have all the water they need, the alarmism surrounding a coming war over water, falls mostly on deaf ears. As research by Aaron Wolf and his colleagues at the University of Oregon shows, the rich fight and cooperate over water all the time. Shooting wars, where militaries are mobilized and deployed, are a fiction of the imagination. To be sure, violent conflict exists, but mostly at the hyper-local level and usually in an unusually extended period of drought. At the same time, the spectre of a water war between states inevitably sucks up financial resources, human capacity and time -- all of which is better used in the service of Water, Sanitation, Health and Education (WASHE) programs everywhere in the world.

In stark contrast, regular water shortages among the world’s poor and marginalized are a daily reality yet this segment of global society is too lightly regarded by policy makers everywhere, from Canada and the United States (in relation to First Nations people) to large swaths of the global South – from Brazil to Botswana – where indigenous people are still regarded as ‘backward’.  Where is mobilization in support of their struggles? As Vandana Shiva has pointed out, this is tantamount to a water war of the rich against the poor, one lately manifest as water-grabs and land-grabs not only in Brazil, Indonesia, Ethiopia and Mozambique, but along the shores of North America's Great Lakes, all in service of multinational capital and justified in terms of 'jobs' and 'economic development'.

Which brings me to #DayZero and the #CapeTown water crisis. I have also recently written about this particular water crisis and it strikes me as a fundamental mistake that the government of the Western Cape and the municipality of Cape Town have abandoned their #DayZero campaigning. This campaign was designed to mobilize the greater metropolis’s nearly 4 million people in a grand water saving scheme so that they might stave off the day when the city would not be able to supply any water due to low levels in the networked system of dams and one groundwater aquifer. The Western Cape has suffered an on-going drought which appears to have finally broken. Some early rains suggest that things may be back to ‘normal’, though one should point out that both drought and flood are normal - something that people seem to always forget once the rains have come, or the floodwaters have receded. The city made several announcements pushing back day zero, from April to June to August, and has recently announced that it has ‘defeated day zero’, at least for this year. Thus, the decision was taken to abandon the #DayZero hash-tag and pronouncements as it had resulted in a loss of business investment and tourism renevue. This, to me, is a mistake.

Let’s review: in the case of climate change, impacts are highly unevenly felt across society and major negative impacts seem to be on some far horizon. In the case of impending water wars between states, well, there is just no evidence in support of such a proposition. Day zero is very different. People of all walks of life occupy the greater metropolitan area. Dam levels have been dropping and are empirically verifiable. Legitimate projections can then be made stating for a fact the date when the city could no longer supply an essential service. In addition, examples of other cases, such as Barcelona, offered not only evidence of collapse but also effective measures to be taken to address the issue. Make no mistake, Cape Town is an unequal society. People are differently empowered socially, economically and politically. Millions have long suffered chronic water scarcity and insecurity across the greater metropolitan landscape even when the dams were full. And plenty of people are profiting – politically and economically – from the crisis. So, what’s the important difference with the other two alarmist approaches to mobilization? There are three:

1.     

•   Everyone, from the rich to the poor, are negatively affected
• The challenge is empirically verifiable with a demonstrable date of impact
• There is emprical evidence of methods to be taken to successfully delay or avert the disaster, and these methods vary from the most basic (grey water reuse) to the most complex (desalination plants)

It is not easy to get fractured and fragmented societies to pull together, or, perhaps more accurately stated, to pull in the same direction so instilling a feeling of common purpose and the building of social capital. When intense storms hit some few weeks ago, there was a palpable sense of relief among Capetonians. While the rains did not mark the end of the drought or an end to the challenge, they did provide residents with a feeling of hope that collective effort would be rewarded. The efforts taken empowered citizens. Rather than succumb to fatalism, they could help themselves and reap the rewards. Longer term solutions will require technology, capital and human resources, so alerting residents that individual efforts do add up, but will have to take different forms through time. In my view, this is a successful first step among many that must be taken to ensure water security for the city, the metropolitan area and the region. Capetonians need to see that #DayZero is still somewhere on the near horizon, that it has not magically vanished to never come again. As stated earlier, drought and flood are extreme but normal events. Climate change is hypothesized to make these more frequent and more intense. There is a saying in the water policy world: a drought is a terrible thing to waste. Capetonians have not wasted their drought. They have taken action and proven to themselves that despite their myriad differences they are capable of banding together in common purpose. The #DayZero campaign, it seems to me, should be thanked for both enabling and proving that a specific sort of crisis can mobilize people for positive outcomes.

I am not convinced that such a campaign can work with either climate change or poor water use practices for the reasons stated above. But the three bullet points above should provide some food for thought about what it takes – short of war and short of climate catastrophe – to get us to do the right thing.   

Reflections on the Cape Town Water Crisis

REFLECTIONS ON DAY ZERO

Larry Swatuk

The city of Cape Town, South Africa faces an imminent threat due to prolonged drought. The drought has been so severe that the city faces the prospect of what it calls ‘Day Zero’, that is, the day - hypothesized to be April 12th - when quite literally the taps will be turned off and the city will no longer be able to deliver potable water to its more than 650,000 customers, amounting to some 3+ million people. In preparation for Day Zero, the city has established a water-delivery contingency plan consisting of some 300 hundred water collection points where each citizen will be entitled to 25 litres of water per day. This is the World Health Organization approved minimum for the maintenance of human health (but little else). At the same time, the city has a number of new delivery systems in various stages of completion, including a number of desalination plants – Cape Town municipality is a coastal environment, surrounded by the sea on three sides – as well as numerous boreholes. Citizens are being encouraged to do their part, by cutting usage to 50 litres per person per day for the next 150 days. For a family of 4, this amounts to about 6 kilolitres of water for the household, the amount guaranteed as ‘free basic water’ under South Africa’s Water Act, but which, under the circumstances is being billed at about $0.40/Kl for all but those designated ‘indigent households’. There are also a wide range of restrictions in place governing the use of water – no car-washing or plant-watering with potable water, for example – and stiff penalties to be meted out to transgressors.

Understandably, the water crisis has created a political firestorm across legislative levels. The City is controlled by the Democratic Alliance (DA), as is the Province. The National Government – who has jurisdiction for water affairs – is under the control of the African National Congress (ANC). Politicians of every stripe are using the crisis to point fingers at those they believe to be the cause of the problem. Quite rightly, they are arguing that this is as much a crisis of governance and management as it is a result of natural processes. Quite wrongly, they are unsurprisingly blaming each other. The ANC is blaming the DA. The Federal DA, under the leadership of Mmusi Maimane, and the Provincial DA, under the leadership of Helen Zille, in turn have blamed both the ANC for inaction and politiking, but also Mayor Patricia de Lille, for ineffectual leadership (among other things). On Wednesday, the DA caucus within the Municipal government passed a vote of no-confidence in Mayor de Lille. At the same time, the Federal DA has announced its ‘Rescue Plan’ under the moniker #DefeatDayZero (see the Twitter handle @Defeat_DayZero). Among the rescue team, Patricia de Lille is conspicuous by her absence. In her stead is Ian Neilson, who will surely be appointed the caretaker Mayor once the DA finally gets around to kicking the right honorable Mayor de Lille to the curb.

I was recently in the Western Cape and was able to see how invested most citizens (and those others dependent upon City of Cape Town water, such as Stellenbosch municipality) are in conserving water as best they can. It has even been raining a bit over the last little while, but the hot summer takes almost all of the rainfall back directly as evaporation. Presently the dams stand at a collective 26% of capacity. This is not nearly enough to satisfy the usual daily usage of somewhere around 900 Ml. Mayor de Lille has been exhorting citizens to use less, to bring total usage down below 500 Ml/day. She has been quite strident in her criticism of the non-participation of many in a situation that requires ‘all hands on deck’. Her churlishness and threats of imposing a drought levy (based on property size as opposed to actual use) opened the door for her political opponents. So, as Cape Town lurches toward Day Zero, how is it that a world city could get itself into such a predicament? And how will it get itself out?

First things first, drought is natural. So is flood. Cape Town is subject to extreme events. A drought such as the present one is not unusual – there have been similar events three times over the past 100 years. If drought is normal, how is it that every drought becomes a crisis? This is a good question with an easy answer: because at the end of the day, it always rains. Most everywhere in the world, a dominant water management practice is, in the face of drought, we must pray for rain. And rain it will. Like I said, it is raining in Cape Town now. There are two significant differences with these past severe droughts, however. First, population increase: the Cape has been growing in leaps and bounds since the end of apartheid in 1994. The City says that it adds 8500 new water and sanitation customers every year. So, the most serious stress on the City’s water management system is the flood of people into the region. At present, approximately 64% (i.e. 345 Mm3/a) of the captured water resource goes to the city, with some 7% delivered to other municipalities (37 Mm3/a) and 29% to agriculture (158 Mm3/a). The system is comprised of 6 dams, 11,000 km of pipe, numerous reservoirs, underground aquifers, wastewater treatment (and reuse) plants and sea outfall systems. In other words, it is not unlike any other major city in the world: heavily dependent upon complex technologies and large amounts of financial capital to sustain itself. It is a mistake to blame the poor, who comprise the majority of the municipality’s population. It is estimated that informal settlements, for example, use only 5% of delivered water. The big consumers are the wealthy and these are not only South Africans; they come from all over the world, building giant homes, buying properties in gated communities, on golf estates, driving the expansion of other major municipal water users such as high end malls such as those at the Waterfront, Tyger Valley, Claremont and Canal Walk.

The second factor that makes this drought different is the region’s integration into globalization, in particular global commodity chains. The region is a major exporter of fresh fruit and wine. These are water-intensive industries. Post-apartheid has witnessed major expansion of the wine industry in the Cape. While these industries are increasingly ‘water wise’ – for example, installing drip irrigation systems – they are many. And ‘many’ means much more water. So the stress on the system is immense.

If we are to point fingers and lay blame, we should look to history. It is always fashionable in Africa to blame colonialism for much of the continent’s woes. I do it all the time in fact, in my classes, and I’m going to do it again here. Cape Town was settled by the Dutch in the mid-17^th Century. What ‘settled’ means in this case, was they began to recreate their world in this ‘new world’: to build a little Amsterdam at the tip of Africa. But Cape Town is not Amsterdam. The Western Cape is a winter rainfall region. This means that it gets the bulk of its rainfall over a 3-4 month period (May-August), with much lesser amounts falling through the hot summer months. This is quite the opposite of most of the temperate world, where precipitation days are in the order of 300+/year and where winter months constitute ‘free storage’. In the Cape, when it is cold, water falls and flows intensely for a short period of time. That water then slowly disappears over the hot summer months (it is estimated that evaporation from the City’s dams accounts for 15% of total water use).

The Dutch and later English and still later independent-South African answer to this was to dam it and divert it. In other words, to flatten out the hydrograph, to make ‘flow’ look more like Holland or England, by capturing it in the winter, thereby making it available throughout the year. New Holland? No problem! Except there is a problem: what happens when it fails to rain? Well, we know what happens: we are watching the crisis unfold today before our very eyes.

Urban form is also a serious problem. Being ‘developed’ means copying the West. If Western cities pave over their landscapes then so should we. If Western cities create elaborate storm water runoff systems to ensure that basements do not flood, then so should we. And so we see an urban form at the southern tip of Africa that looks eerily like that of any coastal European or North American city. If there is year round precipitation, this is generally not too problematic. But if rains are short and intense and you live on a coast, what you have done is help the very water you need in the hot dry summer to run away to the sea. Is this not the height of foolishness? We do it everywhere around the world, so Cape Town is in good company when it comes to building cities a certain way because you have always done so. These path dependent practices must stop! In the short run, Cape Town needs more water now. But in the longer run, Cape Town needs to rethink its urban form, to use this point of acute crisis to initiate innovative practices that help the city recover its African identity. We all need to soften our cities, to rip up the endless kilometres of tarmac and cement and concrete and replace it with indigenous green spaces, to soak up the water, not rush it away. To encourage infiltration, natural plant growth, and discourage evaporation and massive stormwater runoff. Psychological studies are out there articulating the myriad health benefits of green space. People are happy in parks, are they not? And people should be brought into the conversation about what might be done, how, when and to what ultimate purpose. This crisis creates an opportunity not only to rethink the City, but to rethink citizenry and urban governance.

But (poor) governance is at the heart of this crisis. As stated above, South Africa’s political leaders are engaged in a blame-game, scoring cheap political points rather than engaging in constructive collective action. Even DA leader Maimane appears to be on the campaign trail with his ‘Defeat Day Zero’, rather than on the social action trail. If you think I misjudge him, then ask yourself, where is Patricia de Lille in this effort? Should she not be on his ‘list’ of those involved in the ‘rescue plan’? Cape Town cannot be allowed to reach Day Zero. Given that water is a national priority, the ANC must reach out to the DA and work with them on this issue. The recent announcement by the Minister of Water and Environmental Affairs, Edna Molelwa, that groundwater restrictions were now in place looks very much like a potential bridge to be built across the political party abyss.

However, even if the ANC and the DA come together, one wonders where the citizenry are in all of this. Without doubt there is a lack of trust between the state and civil society. Understandably, this stems from the apartheid years. But it has lingered due to a continuing inability of elected officials to do the right thing. My dear friend, Lewis Jonker, used to explain state inaction this way: 'If you are always planning, you are never failing.' In other words, rather than take the hard decision now (that might be politically costly in the short run, but the right thing for society in the long run), government would rather commission a study to 'look into' the issue, while, in the meantime, dithering along. In the case of water governance and management, this means praying for rain. There is a very large literature out there chronicling the gap between beautiful plans and ugly outcomes across the water governance and management landscape not only in the Western Cape, but in the country, the region and the world. (We would do well to watch the Cape closely; in some ways, it is the 'canary in the coal mine', signalling a fate that awaits many a city around the world. Did someone say 'climate change'?)

In the absence of good governance, there is currently a borehole drilling bonanza underway across the middle-to-upper class households of the municipality. It’s called ‘self-help’. It’s the sort of private sector involvement that reinforces the lack of trust between governors and governed, however: I better look after myself because the state is useless. At the same time, one wonders how the poor feel in the middle of all this. To be sure, should day zero arrive, hundreds of thousands of ‘Capetonians’ will not even notice. They have been struggling with ‘day zero’ for many years. Whenever there are water restrictions, there is always a build up of animosity not only between the state and the poorer sections of the citizenry, but also between the rich and the poor: those who live in Retreat look across the railway tracks and up the hill at Constantia and see very little evidence of compliance with water restrictions. The poor ‘pay’ through a loss of access because the state can control the flow to community taps; while the rich ‘pay’ the increased levies with little discernible impact on their disposable incomes. Even with Level 4 restrictions in place, households that approximate Western-use levels (i.e. 20-35 Kl/month) will pay no more than $200/month to continue on their profligate way while facing the most severe drought in living memory. And, should they not wish to pay, they can invest the approximately $5000 it is costing to sink a borehole deep enough to satisfy your ‘normal’ household water needs. Drought? What drought?

The water crisis, I fear, is exposing the hidden underbelly of social fractiousness that exists not only within the Western Cape but across South Africa as a whole. If you scan the Twitterverse or Facebook you will find no shortage of commentary that says it will be nice to see the rich queue along with the poor for a change. One wonders how you build social capital where people are so unevenly impacted by the impending shortage of a non-substitutable, essential resource such as potable water. One hopes that rationality will emerge from across the political spectrum and across civil society so that all South Africans see the Cape as an opportunity to build social bridges rather than blow them up.

I have no faith in the Municipal government to impose stiff fines on transgressors, nor to show the leadership necessary to enforce higher tariffs that make everyone feel the economic pinch should they choose to ignore calls to do the right thing. In the short term, as I said earlier, the focus therefore must be on increased supply: ship-borne desalination brought in from elsewhere; boreholes drilled and reticulated to the system. This will cost a lot of money. Cape Town should not be made to stand alone. There is no shortage of resource access, use and management expertise across the country, the region, the world. We should put our heads together and be part of the solution, rather than gaze on at the problem as though we were rubbernecking at a crash site. The Cape Town crisis is a national emergency and the ANC must mobilize the necessary resources now. Maybe a useful start would be to drain out-going President Zuma’s pool at Nkandla and ship that water to State House in the Cape. Every little bit helps.