Municipalities, water service authorities and individuals could face legal action for violating residents’ rights to access to clean drinking water.
That was the warning handed by the South African Human Rights Commission after releasing its “KZN Water Inquiry Report” this week.
Pavershree Padayachee, the SAHRC’s acting provincial manager in KZN, said they produced the report after being “inundated with complaints relating to water access challenges across the province”.
“Given the systemic nature of this violation, the commission held a provincial inquiry to determine and assess the extent of the alleged violation and its impact on affected communities.”
Padayachee said they found that municipalities in general and water service authorities in violation of international, constitutional and statutory provisions with their shortcomings and failings.
The commission questioned the role of the provincial government, including the Department of Water and Sanitation and the Department of Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs, in ensuring the respective entities were held accountable for the various violations of citizens’ rights.
She said they were cognisant of the challenges where apartheid-era spatial planning denied the majority of communities basic service provision, and that some entities inherited ageing and dilapidated infrastructure.
But they found that offenders failed to plan and manage resources appropriately, especially their handling of non-revenue water (leakages and illegal connections) and maintenance of infrastructure.
According to the KZN Water Master Plan, municipalities were supposed to reserve 8% of their annual budgets for operations and maintenance, but had not done so.
The ripple effect was the shortcomings in functionality of the infrastructure.
Padayachee said they also noticed entities’ reluctance to deal with corruption and non-performance.
“We believe the failure, 28 years post-apartheid, to transform colonial and apartheid-era spatial planning to benefit previously excluded and disadvantaged communities was unacceptable.”
From the research gathered, a number of problems were found with the water tankering system.
Apart from inadequate and disproportionate supply to communities, the manipulation and commercialisation of the system was evident, such that community members with connections and money received regular supply while others struggled.
“The tankering system was politicised, with municipal officials and members of councils possibly benefiting financially.”
Padayachee said they found a disproportionate impact in respect of the water challenges of women and girls, and a lack of reporting and monitoring systems through municipal call centres in many instances.
The report laid down recommendations that would require implementation by the offending entities.
“We will closely monitor the implementation of our findings and recommendations. Should we find these have not been adhered to, the SAHRC will re-assess and consider the most appropriate means to secure redress. This could include possible litigation,” she said.
One of complaints documented in the report were challenges that Tongaat residents faced when they were without tapped water for nearly 10 months, after the April 2022 floods.
They accused the eThekwini Municipality of being “uncaring” in remedying the challenges, and not much has changed since.
Don Perumall, president of the Tongaat Civic Association, said their water woes continued a year later.
“This week residents were without water from 7am on Tuesday until the early hours of Friday.
“It took the municipality nearly a day to send a repair team to stop the water wastage.”
Perumall said that spoke directly to the issue of lost water revenue and the municipality’s failure to make provision for repairs from the budget, which was raised in the report.
“We feel the municipality doesn’t have any regard for our needs,” he said.
Various questions were directed to the eThekwini Municipality with regard to aspects that related to the city in the SAHRC and Tongaat’s complaints.
Gugu Sisilana, spokesperson for the municipality, said they had made submissions to the SAHRC and detailed how last year's floods, “the worst in living memory”, caused extensive damage to their already constrained water resources.
“The city is keen to improve its capacity to mitigate the impact of such calamitous climate effects in the future.”
Sisilana said they were committed to projects to improve potable water supply.
With regard to its high rate of non-revenue water, Sisilana said they had a team assembled to formulate and implement strategic interventions.
She said they had worked hard to overcome their spatial planning issues and they had signed a contract with a service provider to implement technological improvements to overcome their water and sanitation challenges.
Thabani Mthethwa, the DA’s caucus chief whip in eThekwini, said: “The report paints the exact worrying picture.
“The situation with Tongaat was a case of poor planning and a show of an uncaring municipality. Many areas around eThekwini experience water outages longer than a week.”
Mdu Nkosi, the IFP’s eThekwini leader, said the SAHRC was the only one which could take the municipality to court over its indiscretions, that would make the report worthwhile.
“We cannot continue blaming apartheid. We need to see improvements, especially with infrastructure,” he said.
Zwakele Mncwango, ActionSA’s KZN chairperson, said: “The greatest cause for concern was South Africans facing scarcity of water, yet we have the ability to source and distribute water to communities, but officials lack the will to do their work.”
Wisane Mavasa, spokesperson for the Department of Water and Sanitation, said they welcomed the SAHRC report and they had already implemented many of the recommendations.
“The root causes of the decline in water and sanitation services are years of neglect of infrastructure in rural and urban areas, as well as poor operation and maintenance of the infrastructure.
“Municipalities have failed to prioritise budgeting properly and failed to hire staff with the required skills and qualifications,” said Mavasa.
SUNDAY TRIBUNE