Now last year was a really critical year for Capetonians
because of the water crisis.
What did you see, what did you experience
having only just like moved here?
- Probably for the first time in my whole entire life,
I saw a white person queuing to get water.
It was the craziest thing that I had ever seen
in my whole entire life.
These guys with like buckets, in a queue.
No amount of privilege could have protected them
from the water crisis at that point in time.
You're kind of used to that:
People of color, black people, colored people
queue for water.
And now you see a very, very different skin in the queue,
and you're like, "What?"
It's actually an issue affecting people that,
for them, may never be affected.
- So in a way, there's the water crisis that nearly -
was barely averted in Cape Town.
It brought to light a lot of the racial and the structural
racism that exists in this city.
What did you hear, what were people telling you about that?
They experienced the water crisis differently, or the same?
- Generally, people did have a very
high level of discomfort.
But more so very, very privileged people compared to
people that are not so privileged.
Because those that are not so privileged,
they were kind of used to that water does come and go.
But for those that were privileged, it was,
"Why isn't there enough water?
Why can't I open the tap?
Why can't I take a shower?
Why can't I go and jump into the pool
on a Sunday afternoon?"
But something that's really sad, perhaps about even
Cape Town and maybe a very, very big part of just
the country as a whole,
is that inequality here is just so high,
and it's within walking distance.
You could literally one minute be like in a suburb,
and 30 seconds later, be like in a township.
But essentially those people are within the same walking
radius but have completely different living experiences.
But at the point at which water scarcity
now becomes a provincial thing, no amount of protection,
regardless of what area you're in,
will somehow make you immune to it.
- You're using education and education activism
kind of in combination to sort out a lot of South Africa's
and Cape Town's problems.
How does water rights activism fit into that agenda?
- I just think that water is a very basic need.
Because it's so basic, you would assume that everyone
has access to it.
But people not having access to it has a very deep ripple,
has a very deep ripple effect.
An example is that you would think about the fact that
a lot of young girls do not finish school.
And then you're like, "Why?"
When you analyze that whole cycle of it,
it could boil down to the fact that by the time
that they're supposed to go to school, then I have to
go fetch water, have to walk really, really far.
So for me, it just came to the point of saying,
it's not enough to just solve for a single issue
without considering basics.
If basics are not met, people cannot even self-actualize,
they can't even thrive.
That you are now saying we're going to build a bunch
of schools but people can't access very, very basic needs
to even get to that school.
What's the point?
- That's a really, really good point, actually.
It seems that we are so eager to see South Africa,
the continent of Africa, East Asia, to thrive and succeed.
But we want to do it in quite sexy, humanitarian ways.
And boring things like building a well,
maintaining a well -
they're just not sexy, humanitarian things that people
want to do.
Talk to me a little bit about that side of activism.
It can be quite difficult to raise money or raise awareness
for something as basic as the right to water.
- I think that when you are accustomed to a very different
life than of the people that you're trying to help,
it can be quite hard for you to understand that
you are really, really doing things that seem like they
should have been there.
There should have been infrastructure for people to have
water in their running taps.
But if it's not there, then unfortunately,
you do have to do work that is not for clout.
It's just very general work of people actually
have to dig.
Put in a tap.
Make sure that there's water.
And that's not your big initiatives, that is not
your big conferences.
That is just something so basic but also so important
to someone who doesn't have it.
- Right.
Can that be a little bit difficult, draining, when you're
trying to raise awareness about something like this?
The thing that I found -
I tried to live on 50 liters of water
a day for a week, in my town of London,
just to understand what my brothers and sisters
in Cape Town had to go through.
I was so frustrated.
I was collecting bath water to flush the toilet,
and it was just so insane.
I just felt like, wow, I live on the same planet
as these people, and yet I have no understanding
of their lived reality.
- There's a part of saying, "Who am I in relation
to the global problems?"
And a part of it is humbling yourself.
Saying, "You know what, do I really have to have a shower
for like 30 minutes?"
When someone doesn't even - can't even conceive of a concept
of a shower.
- The planet that we're trying to preserve, and the limited
amount of water and access to water that we have,
is being wasted and mismanaged.
That's a political issue.
What are your views, what do you want to change politically
to make water accessible and a basic human right?
- Let's take the city that we are in, for example.
You would find that people in the townships
have as well as use very, very little of
the city's water, compared to those in the suburbs.
But in the townships, you have more people
than in the suburbs.
So there's a part there where we have to say,
"How do we actually distribute this water?
And what type of infrastructures have you put in place
to distribute that water?"
And that whole responsibility falls upon the government.
But as we all know, that if you are of the
higher socioeconomic class,
whenever the government is not performing,
it's very easy to just be apathetic because you can afford
to be in that position.
That for me, it's about saying, "Can we step back
and solve problems for everyone, regardless of what
socioeconomic background they are?"
- As a leader, as a young leader in Africa,
what are your hopes for this continent and what it
can achieve and how it can be a spearhead
in addressing a problem like the global water crisis?
- For me, we are getting to a point where we can no longer
put young people on the side,
and just be like, oh yeah,
we like see, somehow matter.
The average age on this continent is 19 years old.
Average age in South Africa is 26.
We now need to begin to see that happen;
we need to see those young people occupy political office.
We want to be there, we want to make valid points,
we want to contribute towards building policy,
very, very strong action plans.
This year, I voted for the first time.
And I was super, super excited about it.
But something that really disappointed me is that
a very, very big part of the voting population
in South Africa is people under 30,
but we had the lowest turnout within that group.
There was an article that said that,
if all of us young people went to go vote,
single-handedly we had enough power to be able to
elect a ruling party.
- Wow.
- Then we sit back, we're like, "Oh, we're kind of not happy
with how things are going, but then we have a chance
to actually do something, but we don't do anything."
Because that's our form of resistance.
It's just not an effective one, to just stay back.
I would say my dream is to occupy political office
within the next 5 to 10 years.
So a big part of it is, I'm learning what does the
political dynamic look like within the party separation -
I mean, attempted separation between party and state.
I don't want us to be tokens.
I want us to be there, because we have a real
contribution to make.
- Obakeng, thank you so much for talking to Doha Debates.
- No problem, thank you so much for having me.