Some "guy" thinks he knows why Eishcom's so bad at delivering a product: http://mybroadband.co.za/news/govern...city-mess.html

I think his "reason" is just one of the symptoms of the much deeper reasons behind it all ... incompetence, corruption, laziness, don't care attitude, etc.

As for the water ... definitely agreed: It's a disaster waiting to happen in the same category as a ticking hydrogen bomb. I.e. WHEN it goes off (NOT IF) it's going to be orders of magnitude worse than just having no lights for a few hours.

As to the flushing toilets idea ... that's one of many things going on in the so-called "Green Building" ideals. The trouble is every tom-dick-and-harry wants to have their building "Green Star Rated", but when they see what it entails to actually make it so they start retreating. I know, (I'm in Architecture) I've had every single project in the last 10 years have some form of "Let's get it green star rated" - but then when the budget is calculated it's: "What can we omit and still keep our rating?"

The main water ideals in the GBCSA rating means you class water into 3 categories: Black (like the stuff coming out of toilets), Grey (the stuff coming from basins, showers, baths, etc.) and Pottable (the drinkable water from the tap). E.g. you can collect Grey water to fill your toilet's cistern, you can use Black water for landscape watering (i.e. wet the plants), and you can use rainwater to augment Portable (drinkable) water. But that is going to cost a lot indeed, you need a water treatment plant to get rid of stuff like chemicals (e.g. from a washing machine) or split such water off from being re-used, and few buildings these days go with such an expensive system (even though most of them "want to be GREEN" - but only if it costs nothing).