Why South Africa’s taps are running dry

This week Gauteng residents in Westbury and Coronationville took to the streets to protest against chronic water outages, which have also plagued large sections of Ekurhuleni.

Joburg mayor Dada Morero visited the areas affected by the protests on Friday and vowed to restore services within seven days — but seven days will not be enough to reverse decades of neglect of water services.

The situation in Gauteng is dire. Unlike most major cities in the world, Joburg is far from a natural water source. Phase 2 of the Lesotho Highlands Project was meant to provide relief by now, but it was delayed due to demand far exceeding supply and allegations of state capture and corruption. It is now scheduled for completion only towards the end of the decade.

Availability is a problem, but more pressing are the lapses in the distribution of water. What’s worse is that Morero’s promises to communities largely ring hollow, given the actions of the city in recent months.

The systems supplying the suburbs affected have long been neglected and required a large capital injection to build additional pump stations. However, in a classic example of systemic failure, the city has now taken the money for these upgrades back from Joburg Water’s accounts to fund deficits in other city entities. The contractors have downed tools because they are not being paid.

With the exception of the City of Cape Town, municipalities have largely neglected their legislated water responsibilities. Now the national government is stepping in with an amendment to the Water Services Act to force them to comply. 

The FM spoke this week to the national director-general of water & sanitation, Sean Phillips, who explained the roots of the crisis. 

Back in the late 1990s, when new local government structures were being formalised, the Water Services Act was authored by Phillips’s predecessor, Mike Muller, and others.

The act made a careful distinction between a water services authority (WSA) and a water services provider (WSP). A WSA can legally appoint any entity to act as its WSP.

The WSP could be a municipal entity, a department in the municipality, a private company or concession, a water board or even another municipality. Appointing a concession did not amount to privatisation, because the municipality itself retained its status as the WSA. 

 In 1998, 144 of the country’s 257 municipalities were designated WSAs. 

What was crucial is that the WSP was completely empowered to run systems associated with the provision of water, such as collecting revenue, conducting maintenance and hiring experts.

A practical example is Joburg Water, which should have the power over its own revenue collection, budgets and HR functions. This was the practice, but in the mid-2000s the ANC-led city stripped the entity of these powers. This meant water revenue for maintenance and upgrades was not ring-fenced. 

By contrast, Cape Town kept the WSP function as a department internally in the municipality. It complied with the law in ring-fencing revenues and giving the department control over crucial functions. Remarkably, Cape Town is the only metro that functions according to the Water Services Act.

“If a municipality is a water services provider, it is supposed to separate, and account for separately, the WSA and WSP functions,” Phillips says. “Hardly any municipalities have done that. This means they are completely neglecting the role they’re supposed to play. They should have taken action against their internal WSPs for not delivering service according to standards.” 

WSPs are responsible for the day-to-day functioning of the municipalities’ water systems — which does not refer to emergency water tankers, the measure increasingly being resorted to.    

However, there is hope. Two municipalities, one in KwaZulu-Natal and another in Mpumalanga, took the concession route in 1999, entering a 30-year contract with a WSP to provide services to small areas.

“Siza Water was appointed in iLembe and Silulumanzi in Mbombela. These were the first public-private partnerships in water service delivery in South Africa, and to date remain the only two retail WSP concessions in the country,” says Phillips.

The concessions were put in place after the municipalities experienced severe water constraints — large water losses, ageing infrastructure, limited financial capacity to invest in upgrades and a lack of expertise to manage and operate water services. 

With the help of the Development Bank of Southern Africa, the municipalities awarded the concessions through an open tender process. In Mbombela, the concession takes care of 200,000 customers and in iLembe, double that number. Both have been remarkably successful.

“Nonrevenue water supply in the Mbombela concession area is 32%, as opposed to 73% for the nonconcession areas of Mbombela,” says Phillips. “In the iLembe concession area, nonrevenue water is 21%, as opposed to 55% for the district as a whole. Both concessions have also performed exceptionally well in the Blue and Green Drop audits.” 

However, there have been flaws, which he believes South Africa can now learn from nationally. These include a failure by the municipality to hand over the equitable share for indigent users, and the WSA using grant funding for other projects instead of handing it over to the concessionaires. Phillips believes these challenges could be overcome through tighter management contracts.

The legislation has to get through parliament and eventually be signed off by the president — a lengthy process

The national department has also introduced the Water Services Amendment Act, approved by the cabinet and now before parliament. It is aimed at ensuring that municipalities take their roles as WSAs seriously.

The legislation spells out which functions should be conducted by the municipality as the WSA and its appointed WSP, whether that provider is an internal department, a concession, a water board or another municipality.

The addition to the act also provides tighter controls around WSPs, including a provision for them to be licensed operators. Phillips likens it to a driver’s licence. 

The amendment allows for intervention by the minister, should municipalities fail in their responsibilities.

“The amendment will also say that if a WSA fails to respond to direct notices from the national department that its WSP is not performing and does not meet the requirements to be a licensed WSP, then the minister, at their discretion and as a last resort, can legally require the municipality to go through a public consultation process to choose another WSP,” he says.

The legislation has to get through parliament and eventually be signed off by the president — a lengthy process. In the meantime, some municipalities are heeding the advice of the national department.

Emfuleni in Gauteng, for instance, has brought in Rand Water as its WSP, with work already in progress for the water board to take over water provision. 

Rand Water is establishing a special purpose vehicle (SPV) to take over as Emfuleni’s WSP for a 30-year period — helping the council with expertise and enabling it to draw on the board’s balance sheet. Finance minister Enoch Godongwana signed off on the initiative in June and the SPV is expected to take over by the end of 2025.

 It is to be hoped that other municipalities will now adhere to the legislation already in place to reverse the decline in the water sector. Failing that, water provision (or lack of it) could decide the ANC’s fate in the local government elections next year.