The lethal floods in eThekwini were a reminder of what happens when climate change meets inadequate planning and poor governance. But even as KwaZulu-Natal mourns its dead and tries to get to grips with the scale of the devastation, another climate shock is looming over SA. The country faces the very real prospect of a major urban centre running out of water.

I’ve recently heard people complaining that the imminent arrival of Day Zero in the Nelson Mandela Bay (NMB) metro has been underreported in the media. This isn’t entirely fair. A quick Google search will reveal reports quoting worried officials and describing water restrictions going back to 2016. And in the past fortnight, most of SA’s leading news sources have explored the crisis in considerable detail...