By Dr Minga Mbweck Kongo*
The South African national government department responsible for water management is seemingly struggling to place itself to fulfil its mandate. This is evidenced in the number of times the department has been merged and rebranded between 2009 and 2014. The Departments of Human Settlements, and Water and Sanitation were merged and later disbanded after realising more housing and water supply challenges. This observation shed some light on the challenge of transformation in government institutions to provide water in a more integrated approach.
Water and Sanitation Minister Senzo Mchunu plans to once again reform the national water industry and remove municipalities from responsibility for water provision. Interruptions in service delivery are angering citizens two months ahead of national elections. The general reforms aim to attract private investment, enforce accountability, increase performance, and remedy a nationwide crisis that has seen outages, including this month, across Johannesburg.
One of the questions asked is whether water should be free or subsidised for the less privileged? Water, being a natural right, is meant to be affordable, sufficiently accessible, and safe. It is mandatory for South Africa, as a signatory to the UN’s human rights resolutions, to commit to deliver necessary water reforms. Thus, its free water initiatives are aimed at combating the impact of water scarcity and its effects.
Despite the long-lived Freedom Charter, many South Africans are still deprived of basic human rights. South Africa is burdened by many crises, including water scarcity. Leaders remain unsure of measures to minimise the damage. Arguments have been about what crisis to prioritise. However, it remains that all challenges are historical facets of a single crisis: lack of transformation.
South Africa is urgently discussing resolutions for water scarcity and lack of infrastructure. Arguably, given the incipient and deepening constellation of inequality and lack of service delivery, water, challenges are, however, not about to change soon. Instead, everything points to the possibility of further protests and frustration, especially in the face of water challenges that have historically disrupted the nature of livelihoods.
Unanticipated factors have recently disrupted the global supply chain. These are COVID-19, the Ukraine War, and increased climate change and population growth. All of these are preceded by the massive wave of unemployment intra-mobility, which partly account for the extant transformation in the demographic configuration of many provinces of South Africa. All these forces impact the water supply in multiple ways.
There has also been a spread in awareness of load shedding to protect electricity power systems from total collapse, which impacts the water sector. It is not surprising that the relationship connecting load-shedding and water challenges has attracted considerable attention. South African researchers from various disciplines have been focused on multiple fields of study; all in search of solutions to water scarcity and future scenarios in sustainable development.
An additional cause for is whether South Africa is on course towards the provision of water to all its citizens. Also, does the extant befuddled engagement with water inequality in South Africa validate the thesis advocated by Kongo (2022) and Chitonge et al. (2019)? They argue that South Africa’s principal challenge is that it is largely driven by water inequality.
Sticking out clearly is that people’s major interest is water, but this is how far the consideration goes. Unfortunately, these rights are not delivered to all, only the privileged. It has invariably served as an instrument of domination of one class by another.
The question remains: When will this crisis be eliminated for residents to live normal, more beneficial and dignified lives? “I am very, very, very worried”… “I want this thing to go” Mchunu said in an interview at a sustainability conference in Johannesburg.
South Africa is aware of necessary actions to access water, and a rethink of the relevance of relationships people have with water. Lack of water tends to unleash centrifugal forces in different provinces and the fleeting benefits, if any, of its accompanying mantra of dignity, personhood, and development raises questions as to whether urbanism, together with water inequality and its commodification, requisite for throwing up – paradoxically – strong water governance and accountability, may be what South Africa needs.
This is an idea, as is noted in many provinces that is capable of moderating the complex interactions of conflicting social forces, which may be the antidote to the extant dysfunctionality of the water distribution in South Africa. Exploring these boundaries would bring several propositions into the discourse, some of which will be highlighted below.
No constitutional configuration is necessary for water governance. Water is manageable in cases of scarcity. However, much of South Africa’s effort to distribute water equitably is more of a replica of Western societies. However, the latter differs markedly in profound cultural outlook from South African societies.
Also, urbanism, broadly conceived, is not a wholly Western concept and may not be so deemed. Indeed, as a tool for development, urbanism – as historically demonstrated – may prevail in a wide variety of environmental arrangements, even when it varies according to historic conditions.
This provides the basis of the advocacy for a fuller interrogation of the water governance patterns in South Africa, with a view to distilling from elements of urbanism that may turn out to be appropriate for grafting onto what South Africa currently does.
Furthermore, urbanism may not inexorably lead to equitable water access, as the story of many failed efforts to provide water for its citizens – several of them in the different provinces – would attest to. Not overlooking that water governance takes a different process: it is metaphorically a journey and not a destination, a continuum from water scarcity to a water-secure state.
A way forward Studies have revealed that millions of South Africans are already under severe water stress induced by droughts resultant from climate change, deteriorating infrastructure, and water mismanagement. Since water is a shared resource, continued scarcity directly affects South Africa’s health and socio-economic development. Recent projections tell that South Africa will experience a water deficit of 17% by 2030, and climate change will intensify the shortage. South Africa needs to attract private investment, enforce accountability, increase performance, and remedy a nationwide crisis that has seen outages, including this month, across Johannesburg.
**Dr Minga Mbweck Kongo is an anthropologist, development scholar with research interests in water sociality, mobility, urbanism, politics, illness and climate change. He is currently a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Institute for Humanities in Africa (HUMA) at the University of Cape Town.He can be reached via email kongmbweck@gmail.com
