South Africa and the drought that exposed a young democracy

South Africa is a young democracy currently going through a crisis of leadership and constitutional challenge by elites engaged in the dissemination of patronage to their rent-seeking constituency. The worst drought in recorded history has played out at regional level but against the backdrop of complex political dynamics. The government has lost significant capacity at the technical level, largely the result of political priorities driven by the need to decolonise society and the institutions of higher learning. This has manifest in the water sector as systemic failures of key instrumentation systems, rendering the El Nino event invisible until it hit. This case study of the El Nino event shows that drought management is embedded within a broader political process and is not simply a technical management issue. The Vaal River system sustains 60% of the national economy and 45% of the total population of the country, but water security in this system has been placed at risk because of political dynamics.