I’ve long had this sense that there is something morally didactic underpinning much of the City of Cape Town’s interactions with the citizenry. Think about the massively unpopular bottle store hours by-law, or the threats about prosecuting “illegal” Airbnb operators while they should have been organising rainfall prayer meetings on the mountain, as this is a apparently a key KPA for mayors with a liberal political slant.

The threat of Cape Town running out of water deserved a lot more focus and attention and lot earlier, we all agree on this. But there was something a lot more instrumentalist and cynical at play in the machinations of Day Zero:

The DA knew that the City running out of water posed a 800 pound threat to their performance at the next polls. So from a political PR perspective, the goal became: Avoid running out of water at all costs.

And at unspeakable cost it came.

In retrospect, it all makes sense: The shrill, disjointed messaging, followed by blackouts and politicians ghosting…

Followed by the much vaunted “plan” to defeat Day Zero eventually being ill considered, pathetically reactive and woefully inadequate…

Coupled by the press statement that riot police would be protecting water points of which the numbers could never ensure supply to all…

Coupled with our very own Patricia de Lille, soon to be revealed as the morally bankrupt political creed-chameleon that she is, trying to gas-light us into believing that this unadulterated fuckshow was somehow all our fault.

All neatly rolled into this evocative, imagination arresting campaign line — “Day Zero, The Day On Which The Taps In Cape Town Will Be Turned Off” — being blasted on every communication channel with the explicit objective of evoking images of impending rioting, of unleash panic and forcing behavioural change…

And yet just like that, Day Zero, the construct, has withdrawn, disappeared. The mind boggles.

Was this exact brief given to Tony Leon’s consulting firm? Was this a scheme hatched in-house?

If they don’t wanna listen and use less water, we can just scare the beJAYSUS out of them — that’ll learn them!! And we won’t run out of water!! Or lose votes!!! Go Team Blue!

That’ll learn them indeed.

It is fair to say that a large slice of people living in the City were suffering from ecological anxiety for months on end. And it’s likely that there is a collective case of post traumatic stress at play as we speak.

Enter the era of unintended consequences

The losses associated with the water crisis ran into the tens of billions — farmers alone lost R14bn. But let’s look at the impact of Day Zero in sectoral, more quantifiable terms:

Tourism, once one of our key money spinners, has tanked. Speak to any tour operator. Ask any Waterfront hotel. Let them tell you about their February/March 2018 booking numbers.

Wesgro’s Judy Lain is on record stating that January 2018’s income for 18 of the city’s top hotels was 10% to 15% lower than it was last year. That is conservative, and I know from dealing with those very type of hotels in my day job that February/March was way, WAY worse. And April’s not looking rosy either.

I’ve not been able to find any film specific statistics, but I’d bet money the industry is taking a hiding too.

My Airbnb flat was 80% full for 13 months up until the Day Zero campaign kicked off. Now I’m at less than 40%, at lower rates. And I’m not alone.

The lack of tourists and Airbnb patrons, combined with the abrupt halt of Gautengers flocking to Cape Town, has had another terrible consequence.

The once booming property market in Cape Town has flatlined , with Atlantic Seaboard properties shedding up to 28% in value, with volume trade down by over 40% for the period leading up to April 2018.

Don’t believe me? Try sell your house.

If all this wasn’t quite bad enough, Moody’s is thinking about canning our asses as an investment destination.

And yes, the land appropriation without compensation debacle hasn’t helped, but the DA and the City, with their Doomsday Comms Campaign, owns a fat slice of the blame.

And then, to add insult to injury, we get massive rates increases that are going to hurt poor and struggling families.

I worked with someone in the DA who once said that they’re against voting, because they don’t like being forced to choose between contracting syphilis and HIV and gonorrhoea. As of 2019, I’m totally on that bus.

So here’s what we’re going to do. Despite how hard I worked for the party or how committed I am to democracy and a strong opposition, I’m not going to vote blue again. I might even cast a protest vote for an opposition party I don’t support; you know, to help them course-correct a bit.

Or spoil my ballot, at the very least, but I would sooner piss in my own mouth than vote for a party, and local government, by extension, that reckons I am to be psychologically fucked with, treasonously let down and taken for a fool.

And you can rest assured I’ll be encouraging my crew to do the same.