During Cape Town's 2018 water crisis, residents queued at natural springs in Newlands, St James and elsewhere to fill plastic containers. One researcher described collecting water in 25-litre containers, while news photographs showed lines crossing racial and class divisions. Under the city's fifty-litre daily conservation target, springs shifted from an optional supplement to a necessary source for many households.
People sometimes helped those ahead or behind with unwieldy containers. Yet for residents without reliable piped water, queueing for water was not new. The spring line brought different parts of the city to one outlet without erasing that unequal history.