Alternative Strategies: South Africa?s Water Policies
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While many in this hemisphere will think of Cochabamba, Bolivia when the subject of the commercialization of water and its struggle with Bechtel, the water scenario is being played out in a variety of venues around the world. For example, the water issue is in the crosshairs of South African policy-makers. South African water policy has made enormous strides since the establishment of the new African National Congress (ANC) government in 1994. After taking office, it set forth new policies that made sustainable access to clean and healthy water a human rights issue imbedded within the Constitution. Nevertheless,
there is a distinct gap between household water policy and the country?s water service provisions in three major areas: access, sanitation and waste management, and sustainability. First, access to water remains one of South Africa?s primary problems with its household water policy.
While the number of households with access to clean water has increased significantly from 77% in 1993 to 88% in 2003 (Lecture, 3/3/08), the Department of Water Affairs and Forestry (DWAF) data for 2007 shows there exists a backlog of .65 million households without basic water services, in which there no access to any form of formal water infrastructure. Second, although the government?s focus on sanitation and waste management has been increasing, DWAF continues to report a backlog of 3.5 million households with access to sanitation below the levels established in the Reconstruction and Development Program (RDP). Finally, South African water policy has been inadequate to confronting the task of sustainability. Sustainability refers to the obligation of the state to perform 2 functions: first, to protect the natural environment from pollutants and other wastes that would damage the water supply and second, to assure development to communities in order to meet the needs of pr
esent and future consumers.
Although the 1997 Water Services Act emphasizes the protection of South Africa?s scarce water resources from harmful substances and pollution, the implementation of this policy is lacking in terms of a strict enforcement mechanism to uphold pollution standards, as well as the ratification of the structure of charges for waste discharge and water pollution. In considering these three major problems with water services, the problems of access, sanitation, and sustainability will be broached in greater depth in comparison with South Africa?s existing water policy, including the 1997 Water Services Act and the National Water Resource Strategy (NWRS). The purpose here is to further explore the causes for the gap between policy and implementation. After that, a course of action to improve South Africa?s water policy will be entertained, which favors greater efficiency in implementing the existing framework of water service policies set out in the National Water Resource Strategy of
2004, a redefined and more limite
d approach to the concept of Free Basic Water, and finally the creation of an overarching framework for sanitation based on a strategic model for water delivery.
Key Issues in Household Water Policy
Household access to water has shown dramatic improvements since the new ANC government came to power in 1994, with statistical research in 1994 showing 12 million people without household access to water; current DWAF updates for the 2007 report indicates that there are now less than 3 million people without access to water. This in turn suggests that there has been a significant increase in the ability of South Africans to gain access to household water. Two important pieces of legislation contributed to this increase, namely the 1994 White Paper on a National Water Policy and the 1998 National Water Act. The 1994 White Paper stressed the importance of implementing a policy that ensured equitable access to water. It not only abolished the riparian system of water allocation, but also established the reserve, a protected percentage of South Africa?s water that would be used to guarantee meeting basic human needs and maintain environmental sustainability for future generations
. Yet, where the White Paper estab
lished broad guidelines for future policy, the 1998 National Water Act focused exclusively on the question of equity of access to water. This Act mandated the creation of the National Water Resource Strategy (NWRS) to set out a national framework for managing water resources. Additionally, the 1997 National Water Policy contributed to this by classifying water as a national resource for which the government was a public trustee. In 2000, the government committed itself to further addressing access issues by establishing a system of Free Basic Water to benefit low-income households, as well as allocating responsibility for household access to municipalities and local governments to better monitor the needs of consumers.
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This analysis was prepared by COHA Research Associate Andrea Arango