The Intern Diaries: City Without Water

It’s been heeded as a wake-up call for the rest of the world. But as the taps start to run dry, what lessons are there to be learnt from the water crisis in Cape Town? Dateline’s Amos Roberts talks about his recent reporting trip there, in this week’s Intern Diaries podcast.

Dateline reporter Amos Roberts interviews Ntuthuzelo Vika from the Social Justice Coalition. Source: SBS Dateline

This week’s Dateline film, ‘City Without Water’ follows the citizens of Cape Town as they are forced to make drastic changes to their daily lives to try to avoid impending catastrophe – the prospect of a ‘Day Zero’ where there is no more water supply.

Amos Roberts, who reported and produced the story, sat down with Dateline intern Nathan Schmidt to chat about the making of the film and the message he hopes viewers take away from it.

“You get a sense, whether you’re in Johannesburg or Cape Town, of there being two very different cities,” says Amos. “There are middle-class, well-to-do enclaves…But then vast amounts of the city are desperately poor, and problems of crime or access to water are vastly different depending on what part of the city you live in.”

Amos draws a vivid picture of the vast inequality that continues to plague South Africa and how those subjected to staggering poverty are affected by this new crisis, which has been called a “wake-up call” to the rest of the world.

“If you are living in an informal settlement as approximately a quarter of the population do,” says Amos, “they are often only vaguely aware of the idea of ‘Day Zero’. It doesn’t apply to them.

“For them every day is ‘Day Zero’.”

Listen to Amos and Nathan’s full chat here:

Click Here to watch the full episode: City Without Water