During 2024 the University of Cape Town (UCT) — principally via its Future Water Institute and associated research projects — supported practical water-conservation and water-resilience interventions off campus that directly engaged communities and municipal actors. The most concrete example is the PaWS (“Pathways to Water-Resilient South African Cities”) living-lab work in Mitchells Plain (stormwater-pond retrofit, nature-based interventions and co-design with local residents and City officials). Together with community engagement, implementation-guideline work and UCT outreach/education efforts during 2024, these activities provide verifiable, dated evidence that UCT actively supported practical water-conservation measures beyond its campus boundaries in 2024.
- Through its Future Water Institute, UCT operated a living-lab retrofit in Mitchells Plain in 2024 that tested blue-green stormwater pond interventions to increase infiltration and local water supply resilience.
- PaWS project activities in Mitchells Plain included workshops and co-design sessions with local residents and City of Cape Town officials in 2024, and these engagements informed MAR/BGI implementation guidance.
- UCT produced peer-reviewed outputs and practical implementation guidance from the PaWS programme intended to inform municipal practice on stormwater reuse and managed aquifer recharge.
Water conservation awareness through art and performance
As part of the University of Cape Town’s (UCT) Africa Month celebrations, a haunting yet deeply moving and entertaining performance at the Little Theatre on Hiddingh campus drew audiences into a world where water is no longer a right, but a distant memory.
THIRST – “Unxano”, a powerful African contemporary dance and music theatre production, weaves together the urgent narrative of drought, forced migration, and survival in a world of growing water scarcity.
Directed and choreographed by Maxwell Rani, with musical direction by Keketso Bolofo and Nomapostile Nyiki, the performance was staged by the South African College of Music (SACM) and the Centre for Theatre, Dance and Performance Studies (CTDPS) on 23 and 24 May.
The work, performed in multilanguage to embrace the different languages spoken in South Africa, drew standing ovations, with the audience clapping and singing along for its visceral storytelling and stirring symbolism.
Set in a parched land, the performance follows a group of people driven by an elemental desperation: the need for water. Through evocative movement and live music using indigenous African instruments, the performers take the audience on a journey through famine, disease, displacement, and resilience.
“The idea was to make people feel the urgency of the issue,” said Maxwell Rani, a senior lecturer at CTDPS, whose creative vision brought the production to life. “The message is simple but powerful: never underestimate the value of water. We take it for granted until it’s gone.”
Water Stressed Cities (WSC): Individual Choice, Access to Water and Pathways to Resilience in Sub-Saharan Africa
The Water Stressed Cities (WSC) project explores the factors shaping the response of households to the threat of water shocks in four major cities – Cape Town, Dodoma, Lagos and Windhoek – and how their actions can affect the wider resilience of the places where they live and surrounding communities. One of the key features of the research is to explore the role of groundwater in promoting the resilience of cities, and urban communities.
The project runs from January 2020 – December 2025.
With funding from UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), the Water Stressed Cities (WSC) programme of research examines the positive role households can play in promoting urban resilience, but also the risks and challenges this can present over time. The research focuses on the cities of Cape Town, Dodoma, Lagos and Windhoek. It combines research into urban water governance, hydrogeological contexts, social learning, behavioural psychology and socio-economic outcomes.
Cardiff University and UCT’s African Climate and Development Initiative (ACDI) are collaborating with a research focus on how individuals and organisations in Cape Town respond to water crises (notably the 2015-2018 drought) over time, and how these responses influence collective resilience outcomes.
The Cape Town-based research will examine how the Day Zero water crisis was framed and experienced from different perspectives and undertake qualitative research with households to explore how their encounters with water, now and in the past, influence their actions to achieve their own ‘water secure’ future.
The research considers the role individual decision-making plays in collective resilience outcomes. The initial focus is on domestic water supplies and will involve qualitative interviews with households that have invested in securing their own water supplies to supplement or replace those provided by the municipality.
The work involves a series of stakeholder interviews with relevant government officials, hydrogeologists, representatives of non-governmental organisations, consultants and academics; and a series of household interviews with those who use groundwater as part of their domestic water supplies.
These activities were conducted in 2023. A second round of interviews was conducted in 2024. Analysis, presentation and discussion of emerging findings and implications for ways forward around co-governing groundwater is the focus for 2024 and into 2025.