A month ago, I took my family on a week-long vacation to Port Shepstone, a beautiful city on the south coast of KwaZulu-Natal. Upon our arrival at the guesthouse, the owner informed us that while the floods that had devastated the province weeks prior had done minimal damage to the property, there were water challenges resulting from damage to the municipal water pipeline.

Therefore, we would need to ration our water. The guesthouse was pumping water from the ground and storing it in tanks. He informed us that in the past year, municipal water pipes had been vandalised numerous times...