‘Let them shower in hotels’: Johannesburg Premier faces backlash amid water crisis

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa —There’s a water crisis in South Africa’s economic hub, Johannesburg, where taps in some areas have been dry for weeks and protests have broken out.

The problems stem from years of municipal neglect, corruption, and well-documented mismanagement, resulting in poorly maintained and broken infrastructure.

Some Johannesburg residents haven’t had a drop of water for more than three weeks straight: forced to travel to get water from municipal tankers and washing with buckets. Schools and hospitals are also affected.

In a press conference on the crisis last week, the province’s top official, premier Panyaza Lesufi, told residents that Johannesburg’s politicians felt their pain.

“People think that when there is no water, we and our families, we have special water, we don’t. We also go through the same…suffer the same pain,” he said.

Unfortunately, he didn’t stop there.

“In some instances, I had to go to a certain hotel so that I could bathe and go to my commitments,” he added.

Cue outrage. Commentators and cartoonists were quick to compare Lesufi’s remarks to Marie Antoinette’s apocryphal “let them eat cake” comments.

In one meme Lesufi’s grinning face is superimposed on a portrait of France’s most decadent – and reviled – queen. The caption underneath reads: “Let them shower in hotels.”

In a cartoon in the Daily Maverick newspaper, Lesufi is drawn with shower heads coming out each ear saying “tone deaf.” He’s carrying a glass of champagne. Another meme shows the premier in a fluffy bathrobe heading into a shower at the Hilton hotel, saying: “I also suffer.”

Comedians also had a field day.

“Ah, Payaza Lesufi’s joking bro, he’s not real, he’s not a real guy. He said he’s not special…he had to go to a hotel, my brother, my brother,” one stand-up, Linde Sibanda, laughed in a video posted to his Instagram.

“The fact that you’re going to a hotel means you are special bro,” he said. “The average person… if we don’t have water we just stink, we just smell.”

He continued: “This is wrong bro, not the fact that he does that, we know he does that, but don’t throw it in our faces and try act like you’re one of us.”

Another comedian, known as Jam Jam, also mocked the premier.

“He’s like, guys I have to go to hotels, nice five-star hotels, if I want to shower. Guys, I’m affected as well, I have to order Dom Pérignon, or sometimes if there’s no Dom Pérignon, I have to downgrade to Moet et Chandon,” he joked.

Lesufi has apologized for his remarks, saying they were taken out of context, but media commentators say the damage is done to his party, the ruling African National Congress, or ANC.

“It’s insane how politicians are so out of touch with how ordinary South Africans live, with the poverty,” said News24 journalist Bongekile Macupe in a discussion with her colleagues on Instagram.

“I can tell you now the ANC can kiss Joburg and Gauteng goodbye, because voters are going to be brutal to the ANC,” she added.

The ANC will be competing for Johannesburg – a city of around 6 million people– in municipal elections later this year.

It’s the wealthiest city in Africa in terms of GDP, but hundreds of thousands of people still live in informal settlements. Many have never had running water at all.