Traverse Le Goff is a DA councillor in the City of Cape Town and a member of the City's Portfolio Committee on Future Planning and Resilience.

Could the residents of Nelson Mandela Bay become the first major example of a South African population becoming internally displaced and then seeking a form of climate-induced refuge due to the paralysis of its failed local government?

The seemingly imminent arrival of a Day Zero scenario and the resultant onset of water-shedding in Nelson Mandela Bay Municipality will almost certainly give rise to a humanitarian disaster for the 1.2 million people who call that region of our country their home.

While the severity and incidence of the drought which lies at the cause of this calamity will no doubt have a very strong causality attributable to human-induced climate change, it remains to be said that the ANC-led council in Nelson Mandela Bay has absolutely no excuse for failing to do everything in its power to mitigate against the prolonged drought they are experiencing. This is exactly what policymakers have been similarly called upon to do by the scientific community to avoid a climate catastrophe.

The IPCC Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5°C (2018)...