You managed to cut the guts out of my reply to the critics of the government’s water policies and left it meaningless. What you cut out was as follows:
“We (the government and NGOs) know we can work together. We demonstrated that internationally, at the recent Bonn Water Conference. The government’s delegation, with strong support from our organised labour and NGOs contingent effectively changed policy. It is now internationally recognised that affordability should not become a barrier to access to services for the poor in the name of sound financial management.
“This makes the current apparent standoff all the more puzzling. It may be that, from the government’s side, the issues have not been defined clearly enough. We should perhaps have done more to engage a broader range of stakeholders. We propose to do just this in the coming months through a consultation on water services policy which will lead to the publication of a white paper. We hope groups such as RSDN, SAMWU and their colleagues will engage constructively in this process.
“As we move to the next stage of South Africa’s quiet democratic revolution, at the local government level on which development is so dependent, we will need a massive mobilisation of civil society’s warriors to help turn excellent policy on democratic local governance into reality.
“It will not be helpful, least of all to the poor, to have a further mobilisation of the regiments of sour Sancho Panzas, launching unquestioning assaults against the neo-liberal windmills pointed out by vainglorious Don Quixotes and ignoring the many real battles which need to be fought.”
To that I should add that we will also need newspapers to pay some attention to content rather than simply making up sensational headlines. And it would be good practice if, as a minimum, journalists, academics and others would talk to the people whose policies they attack just to ensure that they are not tilting at windmills. Mike Muller, director general of Water Affairs and Forestry