Many local residents felt outraged, disappointment and experienced a deep sense of personal deprivation. Just when we thought we knew how to cope with electricity load shedding, we had to learn how to deal with water shedding.
Because more than 60% of human body mass consists of water, we rely on water to ensure essential sustenance. It is part of our being alive on earth.
Since the onset of the 21st century strategic planners in many parts of the world have been working on three components they consider to be of vital importance. If any single one of the three has to collapse, the other two would easily follow.
Scientists speak of a nexus. Think about the egg boiling meter in granny’s home, where two glass bubbles linked, with a narrow nexus, siphons through fine grained salt. When the full container is turned upside down, the salt slowly passes through. By the time all has run through the narrow nexus to the next container, the egg is boiled.
Figure 1 The egg-timer’s salt passes through a nexus. (Source: Microsoft Bing)
Three essential substances are required for our societal nexus. They are: water, energy (electricity) and food (WEF). If one of these components has to stop flowing through the nexus, the other two are bound to collapse.
Think how our water supplies are used at power stations to produce electricity (energy). The same goes for the food we eat. Food supplies are energy resources of human and domestic animals. Little wonder then that 60-70% of our water supplies are set aside for food production.
Remember too that our Rand Water drinking water supplies are produced nearby at Vereeniging’s Suikerbos purification works. But electricity is used to pump the drinking water to all parts of Gauteng and even parts of the provinces of North West, Mpumalanga, Free State and Limpopo. Energy is key to the process.
The Water energy food nexus (WEF) nexus is nowadays the proverbial canary in the coal mine for planning experts of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, working on massive computer database systems. They have to constantly monitor how the WEF nexus components are distributed to all sectors in society.
Should one component fall out of kilter, it can cause severe disruptions.
Water remains potentially the most crucial nexus component, especially for us humans.
The recent water outages experienced in many parts of Gauteng, are symptomatic of urban decay. In last week’s New Frame online magazine, the editor speaks with dismay about the state of decay in which the City of Johannesburg has fallen into.
The decay is blamed on political elites who have abused political power. Much the same can be said about the sad state of affairs in Emfuleni.
The symptoms of decay, in Emfuleni’s WEF-nexus system, have been ever-present since the early 2000s.
* The author is an extraordinary professor in the Faculty of Humanities at North-West University’s Vanderbijlpark campus.
