Ramaphosa water

Ramaphosa vows to help “bring water to Cape Town”

ANC President Cyril Ramaphosa has told global media that national government will be doing all it can to bring water to the people of Cape Town, immediately.

Ramaphosa water

While the World Economic Forum comes to an end today, ANC President Cyril Ramaphosa has already left Davos and returned home. Ramaphosa and team South Africa have been talking to global investors, politicians and the world’s media. While rooting out corruption was the main question, there were also plenty about the situation in Cape Town.

Minister in the Presidency Responsible for Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation, Jeff Radebe said, said one of the government’s key priorities will be infrastructure maintenance regarding water systems in Cape Town.

With day zero now scheduled for April 12, Radebe committed that national government will assist the province and local spheres of government in dealing with the crisis.

“Especially its maintenance, because we have spent a lot of money as the South African government in the past few years, but on the maintenance there are major challenges which explains why we are having some of the challenges of water in the Western Cape.”

As the current Deputy President of South Africa, Ramaphosa made the international media rounds on Thursday evening. In his interview with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour, he also promised to help Cape Town in every way possible.

“Climate change is the reality… we in South Africa regarding to Cape Town are now seeing the real effects of climate change. We’re facing a real, total disaster in Cape Town that will affect four million people. “

“I’m going back home and I’m going to get as many people as possible to put our heads together and see exactly what we should be doing, in the immediate and long-term. But in the immediate term, we have to make sure we bring water to the people of Cape Town without any fail.”

Read: CPT Water Crisis: National government says it will help extract final 10% of dams

The statement from Ramaphosa comes less than a week after the Department of Water and Sanitation vowed to provide specialist equipment to gain access to the last 10% in the dams, water normally impossible to extract.