We are encouraged by the interest shown in our water projects. Particularly welcome are the concerns outlined by Charlene Smith (“Too poor to pay for services”, Monitor, March 26 to April 1) which focus on the difficult bit: keeping infrastructure working.
If Smith had talked to us, we would have provided a clearer perspective.
First, most of the Department of Water’s supply projects focus on rural communities, and most of those now completed were started before local government was established.
Second, when community organisations were consulted, they agreed to many things to get water infrastructure provided. Not surprisingly, there were issues such as payment about which they were later less enthusiastic. Ad hoc community organisation membership changes and new members are not necessarily bound by their predecessors.
Third, there is a great difference between organisational arrangements for a scheme to supply a community of 1 000 and one which has to provide for half a million.
South Africa’s history has produced a “rural” landscape, which is in many ways dysfunctional. The majority of rural people live in settlements larger than 5 000 – which in some countries would be considered towns. They are often in areas where water sources are inadequate and can only be supplied from elsewhere by large regional schemes.
Service provision is organised at local government level. Organisational “solutions” based on small community experience are often inappropriate in the wider context. Such solutions also fail to reflect the fact that local government must represent its community interests and we cannot bypass or second-guess them.
The basis of the department’s policy on community water-supply provision is to support emerging local government to do its job as best possible.
This brings me to financial issues. In 1994, we couldn’t talk about subsidies to operate services as there was neither framework nor funds for this. Projects were implemented on the understanding communities would pick up operating costs. Communities accepted this because there was no alternative.
There is now a better understanding of the financial requirements to keep water supplies operating, and the outlines of a local government structure to achieve that. Mechanisms are being put in place to ensure local governments have funding to cover the costs of providing basic services.
The local governments’ equitable share of national revenue is to be allocated, in part, on the basis of the number of poor people in a community for that purpose. By providing the infrastructure to be operated, we are helping to ensure the equitable share can be equitably used to benefit the people for whom it is intended.
Finally, planning is key. But it must be done at local level. We will get good decisions when the implications are felt by those who take them. This is why we require local government water service authorities to produce a development plan which must explain how they will build and operate infrastructure to provide services.
We hope that, when these plans begin to function, they will provide a framework to help local government make sensible decisions. In future, if such planning has not been done, funding will go to where the preparatory work has been done.
Mike Muller is director general of the Department of Water