Water outages loom over major South African hub | Bloomberg News

A severe drought has depleted dams in the southern Nelson Mandela Bay municipality, which includes the coastal city of Gqeberha, with three of the main reservoirs that supply about a third of its 1.3 million people close to empty. Much of the remaining water is of poor quality and the overuse of chemicals to treat it has led to the deaths of at least two children, livestock and vegetation.

South Africa and other nations on the continent are among those most vulnerable to food and water insecurity caused by extreme weather events, according to the latest report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The warming of the planet, caused by human emissions of greenhouse gases, is leading to more frequent and more extreme floods and droughts in the world’s poorest continent, according to the scientists.

The 9,000-hectare Coega special economic industrial zone, which lies north of Gqeberha and is one of the government’s flagship development projects, has also been hard-hit by the water shortages. Companies have resorted to using rainwater tanks, and have had to contend with reduced water pressure and flows being restricted, said Simlindele Manqina, the zone’s spokesman.

The response has been inadequate “due to the ongoing instability issues facing the city council and the resultant impact on the municipality’s ability to deliver basic services,” said Denise Van Huyssteen, chief executive officer of the Nelson Mandela Bay Business Chamber. “They queue for hours in lines at communal taps in some working-class communities,” he said. The quality of the water is also so poor that it is making people sick so they are either forced to boil it, which pushes up their electricity costs, or buy bottled water, he said.

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