Johannesburg - South Africa is experiencing a water crisis that’s reaching its breaking point. It is brought on by the dire effects of climate change and the national government’s mismanagement.
The impending consequences and reactive measures of the ANC-led administration have led to thousands of South Africans struggling for access to human rights. The government’s predicted reactionary response is a telltale sign of their ill-preparedness to deal with a matter that was much forewarned.
The apartheid government was warned on two occasions (in 1970 and 1990, respectively) that the country’s water infrastructure would severely deteriorate. “Vanishing Waters”, a book published in 1998 by UCT zoologists Bryan Davies and Jenny Day, predicted that the country would rapidly run out of water due to the demand of a growing population outstripping the supply. This, in addition to the lack of maintenance to infrastructure by local municipalities, has contributed to the experienced water shortages and reactive protests by frustrated South Africans.
As written in the National Water Act (1998) Water Services Act, the Department of Water and Sanitation (DWS) is mandated to monitor and regulate water and sanitation institutions and services. In matters of the provincial administration, local municipalities are handed the responsibility of their respective water affairs. This, according to experts and political opposition parties, has contributed to the crisis being faced by the country.
“Municipalities which have been deemed as being non-functional need to be placed under administration by the DWS to ensure compliance with applicable standards and the overall improvement of water management. The DWS, therefore, needs to intervene, where necessary, to ensure compliance, service delivery and overall water security,” explained Professor Anja du Plessis from Unisa.
Municipalities are generally allocated about 5 to 12% of their annual operating budgets for repairs and maintenance, but some have reported massive overspending to National Treasury with little to show through their approved projects. Under the department, there are 13 water and sanitation projects across the nine provinces that have missed their deadlines and are still uncompleted. One of those is the Giyani water supply project in Limpopo. Conceived in 2014 and aimed to supply surrounding villages with clean water by 2019, the project is incomplete due to delays, investigations looking into corruption and cancelled contracts.
Then there is the Masodi wastewater treatment works, which was approved in 2015 and is still incomplete. All major incomplete water projects across the nine provinces have had their local MECs answer to the national government for the delays to the vital infrastructure projects. Many of these projects track back to as far as 2013 in terms of their start dates.
In efforts to solve the water security issue, the DWS under Minister Senzo Mchunu had provided and implemented projects that would solve the issue of access to clean drinking water. At a press briefing in August, Mchunu updated the country on the efforts of his department since taking office in 2021 and the measures placed to resolve delayed projects and other infrastructural and water supply issues.
“We do, however, want to state that notwithstanding the progress, we still have a long way to go, but understand us to be ready for the task and dedicated to serving the citizens of South Africa,” Mchunu said.
One of those projects is the National Water Partnerships Programme. It is framed around the private-public partnership framework used in Eskom’s plans to stabilise the power supply.
However, experts like Professor Du Plessis feel that the DWS needs to be pushed to ensure accountability and the rapid improvement of water infrastructure.
“By improving overall co-operative water management/governance, forming successful and transparent public-private partnerships and addressing major water challenges such as unsustainable water demands, poor water and sanitation service delivery, ill-maintained or non-functioning water infrastructure as well as widespread and continued water pollution with suitable context-specific interventions,” she said.
National Treasury said last year that South Africa would need to close a capital funding gap of an estimated R33 billion a year for the next 10 years to secure its water supply.