RADAR • WATER STRESS

South Africa’s increasing water stress requires urgent informed actions

The state of the country’s wastewater treatment and water treatment works are of major concern as 56% and 44% are in poor or critical condition, with 11% not functioning at all

BY Prof. Richard Meissner | University of South Africa (UNISA) Prof. Anja du Plessis | Research Specialist in Integrated Water Resource Management, UNISA

PROGRESS HAS been made since 2015 on a global scale in terms of increasing access to water of acceptable quality and sanitation services—but 2 billion people still lack safely managed drinking water and 3.6 billion people lack safely managed sanitation.

At a regional level, drinking water from improved sources is not necessarily a guarantee of good or acceptable quality. Some regions have lacked continued progress. Sub-Saharan Africa is one of them. It has the highest proportion of people lacking safely managed drinking water and using unimproved sanitation.

Since the mid-1990s, South Africa has made headway in expanding water and sanitation services, especially in rural areas. In some areas, there has indeed been an improvement, but in many others, a deterioration.

Several factors are driving this state of affairs, including natural limitations such as below average annual rainfall, lack of financing and technologies and the most cited cause of the country’s water crises—poor water governance.

However, the water situation is a complex issue. The country’s freshwater resources are stressed on all fronts by unsustainable consumption patterns, increasing demands, failing infrastructure, unreliable or non-existent water and sanitation services and continued pollution. The added effects of increased climate variability with changing rainfall patterns add significant stress, questioning the country’s current and future water security.

A big contributory factor to all this is the governance issue which includes the country’s fragmented water governance departments combined with continued inaction as well as non-accountability at various levels of government. This has led to questionable decisions as well as increased water scarcity and stress of South Africa’s already limited water resources and unreliable supply.

What’s missing

Not all municipalities are equal when it comes to local government management. Some of the reasons for this are:

• rural-based municipalities do not have the same financial resources as the larger metropolitan municipalities.
• skills are often lacking in rural areas. Young science and technology graduates favour city life and its higher incomes and are often reluctant to work there.
• the mismanagement of funds.
• no forward-planning and problematic public administration processes.
• disharmonious politics among various political actors, often within the same political party.

South Africa has world-class water resource management legislation and policies. However, its overall water governance and management practices have been criticised and found wanting.

Co-operation, co-ordination and communication are major requirements for improved water governance. These are lacking to varying degrees across government structures and localities.

Resources are often either lacking or poor, not only within local government but within the Department of Water and Sanitation itself.

Another major gap is infrastructure. Regular water quality monitoring and water infrastructure assessments are crucial to: 1, reducing the increased risk of the contraction of water-borne diseases; 2, degradation of ecosystems; and 3, major physical water losses. Unfortunately, this has not been done consistently.

Fixing failing infrastructure falls on municipalities which are already under massive financial constraints. The only route is to pass on the cost to residents through increased water prices and to cut water supply if not being paid for.

Solutions

There is a plan in circulation—which has been on the cards for a long time—the creation of a National Water Resource Infrastructure Agency. The agency’s purpose is to fund, develop, maintain, operate and manage the country’s national water resources infrastructure.

President Cyril Ramaphosa mentioned the creation of the agency in his 2022 state of the nation address. This suggested that there was political will at the highest level of government to fix the problems of water and sanitation services.

However, the government has been bad at implementation. Take the catchment management agencies which were first suggested in the mid-1990s. Originally 19 were envisaged, but their configuration has changed quite a few times in the intervening years. They were designed to decentralise water management to the local level. After more than two decades, only two are operating: the Breede-Gouritz and the Inkomati-Usuthu agencies.

Finally, there is a worrying level of overall ignorance about the current state of South Africa’s water resources and what is required to ensure adequate and reliable supply.

Going forward, the key to water security will be for both the government and South Africans to become more knowledgeable and improve on the overall management of the country’s water resources, deteriorating infrastructure, poor water and sanitation service delivery as well as continued pollution of already stressed water resources.