‘Capturing Water' Spotlights South Africa's Grassroots Fight to Preserve Precious Resource Before It Runs Out
In early 2018, as South Africa's Western Cape region was in the midst of a yearslong drought that brought its reservoirs to historically low levels, residents of Cape Town and its surroundings began to brace for 'Day Zero,' when the municipal water supply would be exhausted and the taps would run dry.
That catastrophe was narrowly averted. But as South African filmmaker Rehad Desai ('Miners Shot Down') warns in his timely new documentary 'Capturing Water,' playing this week at the Joburg Film Festival, the city's water crisis barely scratched the surface of a much larger threat, as climate change pushes South Africa and much of the continent to the brink of a full-scale emergency.
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'We've got 250 million people facing water stress, mainly in urban areas, across the continent by 2030,' Desai tells Variety. 'The temperatures are just [increasing] exponentially. We're a dry continent. It's becoming drier because of climate change.'
As 'Capturing Water' points out, the apocalyptic scenario that faced the Western Cape from roughly 2015-2020 was a disaster years in the making. While drought and climate change were partly to blame, so, too, were years of government neglect and mismanagement, despite the Western Cape widely being considered 'the best functioning municipality we have,' according to Desai.
The consequences on both the supply of clean water and the environment have been stark: As the film notes, not only does much of Cape Town's poorly treated sewage get pumped directly into the sea, but it takes a staggering 55 million liters of freshwater a day to get it there.
Across South Africa, the picture is even bleaker, with 3.5 million households lacking access to clean water, while 35% of the clean water that is available is lost through leaking infrastructure, according to statistics cited in the film. Desai says the country's municipalities 'don't have enough money or enough competence' to solve the problem, while budgets for government services continue to get slashed.
In that climate, the director adds, 'political choices have become critically important.' In Cape Town, just 13% of the population consumes 51% of the water, with that supply rapidly dwindling because of growing household and industrial use. Turbo-charged development, fueled in part by a post-pandemic boom in tourism, has added to the strain, putting access to clean water for millions of local residents directly at odds with a government push for relentless growth.
Water rationing has become commonplace — with much of that burden falling disproportionately on the shoulders of the poor. 'You see the inequity of the situation, and the nonsensical nature of the market approach to water, when you see that many, if not most, of our townships are only getting a couple of hours of water a day,' Desai says. 'You can see the class dimension, the class inequality, very starkly at the moment.'
That's given rise to a series of increasingly urgent questions. 'How are we going to share what water we have? What is a rational, equitable plan going forward so we don't have the urban elites…consuming as much as they want, while others don't have anything?' Desai asks.
While 'Capturing Water' doesn't answer those questions, it nevertheless points to a way forward, with the director noting: 'The best solutions for water are often the local solutions.' The documentary spotlights grassroots efforts to tackle the Western Cape's seemingly intractable water crisis, including working-class activists mobilizing against water restriction devices and water privatization; a farmer taking the Cape Town government to court over plans to cement over a vital aquifer; and a suburban activist tirelessly working to stop the sewage flowing into life-giving wetlands.
The fight, however, is not South Africa's alone. 'Capturing Water' highlights the increasingly dystopian industries that have sprung up as climate change threatens water security across the globe. In California, the purchase of millions of acres of farmland by Saudi Arabian companies exporting crops to the drought-stricken Middle East has put that state's aquifers at risk, while financial speculators gambling on water futures are literally banking on the price of water continuing to rise — pushing it further out of reach of the world's poorest billions.
'As water becomes more scarce, there's a bigger squeeze on those who can't afford to pay,' Desai says. In the process, water becomes a commodity subject to the mercies of the global marketplace, rather than a basic human right.
'Capturing Water' follows on the heels of Desai's politically charged documentaries including the Intl. Emmy Award-nominated 'Miners Shot Down,' about the notorious 2012 massacre of 34 mineworkers by South African police in the town of Marikana, and 'How to Steal a Country,' a damning portrait of the billionaire Gupta brothers, who have been accused of turning the country into their personal fiefdom.
Desai is planning a wide rollout of 'Capturing Water' — first across South Africa, then the rest of the continent — hoping to harness the urgency of the moment into a rousing call to action. 'That's what's required in this instance — a film which inspires people,' he says.
'I've understood over time that you're not going to see change, or any community of activism that has a critical mass, unless you can move people emotionally. I remain convinced that film is a very important tool in social change.'
The Joburg Film Festival runs March 11 – 16.
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14-06-2025
Rescuers still pulling bodies out of the water as death toll in South Africa floods reaches 86
CAPE TOWN, South Africa -- The death toll in floods in South Africa's Eastern Cape province has risen to 86, the police minister said Saturday as rescuers continued to retrieve bodies from the floodwater. Senzo Mchunu, the country's top law enforcement official, spoke to police rescue teams that have been searching for missing people and recovering bodies in and around the town of Mthatha since the floods hit in the predawn hours of Tuesday. Mchunu said the floods were a tragedy but urged local residents to ignore what he called inaccurate reports spreading on social media that the disaster was caused by someone opening the sluice gates at a nearby dam, leading to water surging through communities. Mchunu said the Mthatha Dam in question did not have sluice gates. South African President Cyril Ramaphosa said on Friday during a visit to Mthatha that authorities would investigate if there were any problems with the local dam that might have led to the tragedy. A wall of water 3-4 meters (10-13 feet) high in places flowed out of the river, the head of the provincial government said, washing away victims with parts of their houses and trapping others inside their homes. Ramaphosa partly attributed the rains and floods to climate change and said some of South Africa's coastal regions were now constantly vulnerable to weather-related disasters. More than 400 people died in flooding in and around South Africa's east coast city of Durban in 2022, which a study linked to climate change. The floods in the Mthatha area and a neighboring district caught many people unaware despite weather services issuing warnings last week that an extreme cold front was heading for the region, bringing heavy rains and gale-force winds. The largely rural region is one of the country's poorest and authorities said communities living in informal housing close to the river were especially vulnerable when it burst its banks. Authorities have been criticized for the rescue response but also for the state of the infrastructure in the area. Officials believe that people are still missing and the death toll could rise further as rescue teams have been searching through floodwater and damaged homes for nearly a week. One of the bodies retrieved on Saturday was that of a boy that rescuers believed was around 13 or 14 years old. Many children are among the dead, although authorities haven't given an exact count. Some of the victims were washed up to 2 kilometers (1.2 miles) away from their homes by the floods.
San Francisco Chronicle
14-06-2025
- San Francisco Chronicle
Rescuers still pulling bodies out of the water as death toll in South Africa floods reaches 86
CAPE TOWN, South Africa (AP) — The death toll in floods in South Africa's Eastern Cape province has risen to 86, the police minister said Saturday as rescuers continued to retrieve bodies from the floodwater. Senzo Mchunu, the country's top law enforcement official, spoke to police rescue teams that have been searching for missing people and recovering bodies in and around the town of Mthatha since the floods hit in the predawn hours of Tuesday. Mchunu said the floods were a tragedy but urged local residents to ignore what he called inaccurate reports spreading on social media that the disaster was caused by someone opening the sluice gates at a nearby dam, leading to water surging through communities. Mchunu said the Mthatha Dam in question did not have sluice gates. South African President Cyril Ramaphosa said on Friday during a visit to Mthatha that authorities would investigate if there were any problems with the local dam that might have led to the tragedy. A wall of water 3-4 meters (10-13 feet) high in places flowed out of the river, the head of the provincial government said, washing away victims with parts of their houses and trapping others inside their homes. Ramaphosa partly attributed the rains and floods to climate change and said some of South Africa's coastal regions were now constantly vulnerable to weather-related disasters. More than 400 people died in flooding in and around South Africa's east coast city of Durban in 2022, which a study linked to climate change. The floods in the Mthatha area and a neighboring district caught many people unaware despite weather services issuing warnings last week that an extreme cold front was heading for the region, bringing heavy rains and gale-force winds. The largely rural region is one of the country's poorest and authorities said communities living in informal housing close to the river were especially vulnerable when it burst its banks. Authorities have been criticized for the rescue response but also for the state of the infrastructure in the area. Officials believe that people are still missing and the death toll could rise further as rescue teams have been searching through floodwater and damaged homes for nearly a week. One of the bodies retrieved on Saturday was that of a boy that rescuers believed was around 13 or 14 years old. Many children are among the dead, although authorities haven't given an exact count. Some of the victims were washed up to 2 kilometers (1.2 miles) away from their homes by the floods.
Yahoo
14-06-2025
- Yahoo
Rescuers still pulling bodies out of the water as death toll in South Africa floods reaches 86
CAPE TOWN, South Africa (AP) — The death toll in floods in South Africa's Eastern Cape province has risen to 86, the police minister said Saturday as rescuers continued to retrieve bodies from the floodwater. Senzo Mchunu, the country's top law enforcement official, spoke to police rescue teams that have been searching for missing people and recovering bodies in and around the town of Mthatha since the floods hit in the predawn hours of Tuesday. Mchunu said the floods were a tragedy but urged local residents to ignore what he called inaccurate reports spreading on social media that the disaster was caused by someone opening the sluice gates at a nearby dam, leading to water surging through communities. Mchunu said the Mthatha Dam in question did not have sluice gates. South African President Cyril Ramaphosa said on Friday during a visit to Mthatha that authorities would investigate if there were any problems with the local dam that might have led to the tragedy. A wall of water 3-4 meters (10-13 feet) high in places flowed out of the river, the head of the provincial government said, washing away victims with parts of their houses and trapping others inside their homes. Ramaphosa partly attributed the rains and floods to climate change and said some of South Africa's coastal regions were now constantly vulnerable to weather-related disasters. More than 400 people died in flooding in and around South Africa's east coast city of Durban in 2022, which a study linked to climate change. The floods in the Mthatha area and a neighboring district caught many people unaware despite weather services issuing warnings last week that an extreme cold front was heading for the region, bringing heavy rains and gale-force winds. The largely rural region is one of the country's poorest and authorities said communities living in informal housing close to the river were especially vulnerable when it burst its banks. Authorities have been criticized for the rescue response but also for the state of the infrastructure in the area. Officials believe that people are still missing and the death toll could rise further as rescue teams have been searching through floodwater and damaged homes for nearly a week. One of the bodies retrieved on Saturday was that of a boy that rescuers believed was around 13 or 14 years old. Many children are among the dead, although authorities haven't given an exact count. Some of the victims were washed up to 2 kilometers (1.2 miles) away from their homes by the floods. ___ AP Africa news: Gerald Imray, The Associated Press
