Water and sanitation minister, Pemmy Majodina. (DWS/X)
Water and Sanitation Minister Pemmy Majodina told a parliamentary plenary session on Tuesday that South Africa was not experiencing a water crisis, but added that potable water availability could “rapidly deteriorate” as demand escalates.
There were, however, issues with water management, she said, and consumers — including municipalities — should use the resource with greater care.
“If we are to avoid water shortages in future, South Africans need to change their behaviour and treat water like the scarce resource that it is,” said Majodina, repeating something she often says about the country’s relationship with water.
“Municipalities must fix the leaks in their water distribution systems. We cannot afford to be throwing away almost half of the water that is supplied to municipalities through leaks,” she said.
Majodinas statement’s come a day after the constitutional court announced that it had to halt physical or in-court case hearings since November 1 because of unreliable water supply in the court building.
The court said via a statement that the exact cause of the “water supply challenge” was unknown, but it appeared to be generalised in the Hillbrow area, where the court is located. Leaks had also been detected in the court’s water system, but those had been addressed by a plumber.
“Whilst the court has a water tank installed for ablution facilities, this back up water supply lasts for only one working day, and the City of Johannesburg is unable to refill it promptly on a daily basis to allow Court operations to continue uninterrupted. In the result, the Court has been unable to conduct physical or in-court case hearings.
“Constitutional Court management is in regular contact with the City of Johannesburg and Rand Water regarding the ongoing water supply challenges in the Hillbrow area. The Court will provide an update to court users when more information comes to light,” the court said.
Municipalities countrywide are battling with delivery of potable water to residents — the result of years of neglect of infrastructure and underspending — with the metros of Johannesburg in Gauteng and eThekwini in KwaZulu-Natal being particularly hard hit and suffering weekly outages that draw the ire of ratepayers and erode business confidence.
The water supply disruptions in both of those metros and surrounding municipalities were the result of a rapid increase in demand, population growth and “partly by [increased] leaks in municipal water distribution systems,” said Majodina.
Water losses in Gauteng municipalities averaged 33%, she said. In eThekwini, the average was about 45%. The international norm is 15%.
“The leaks are, in turn, the result of under-budgeting for infrastructure maintenance by municipalities, which is partly caused by weak municipal billing and revenue collection for water services,” the minister said.
According to the water department’s own Drop reports, 46% of South Africa’s water supply systems do not comply with safety standards, 67.6% of waste-water treatment systems are failing and 47.4% of the country’s water is lost or unaccounted for.
While new dams were being constructed, and others upgraded, there were limits to this, Majodina said.
“We are already harnessing approximately 75% of our utilisable surface water resources, and the remaining opportunities for capturing surface water in large dams are expensive.
“Broadening of South Africa’s water resource mix is therefore critical for water security. We need to diversify the water resource mix by increasing the sustainable use of groundwater, making more use of desalination of sea water in our coastal towns and cities, and by re-using water from the waste-water treatment systems in our towns and cities,” she said.
“Broadening” the water mix has been under consideration for over a decade, at least since the last full Drop reports were published in 2014, but lack of haste and implementation has been named as a critical failure of the previously ANC-led government, according to water experts and activists.
Majodina said the decline of water delivery at municipal level had happened “despite high levels of support from the national government”. This included more than R60 billion provided annually for water and sanitation infrastructure grants and free basic water for the poor.
“The solution is not for national government to take over municipal water functions. Municipalities must be made to work better,” she said.
Reforms should focus on ensuring that municipal water services are professionally run and financially sustainable, supported by stronger legislative measures like the proposed Water Services Amendment Bill, which would require municipal water services providers to obtain an operating licence to ensure basic competency, she said.
Further reforms from the treasury should mandate that revenue from water services is reinvested in those services, with grant conditions incentivising better management and financial sustainability.
In response to Majodina’s speech, the Democratic Alliance deputy spokesperson on water, Stephen Moore, said the minister was aware of which municipalities were failing in their mandates. They should be named, he said, and the delinquent ones potentially taken to court.
There was a need for greater accountability, better municipal management and a cooperative approach from national government departments to address crises at local government level, Moore added.
In their responses to Majodina, the United Democratic Movement, Inkatha Freedom Party and African Christian Democratic Party all urged the minister to acknowledge the crisis.
Wouter Wessels of the Freedom Front Plus said water losses and infrastructure were problems that needed to be resolved, instead of the consumer being blamed.
Public departments and entities were notorious for water losses, all taking place under the watch of the government, he said, adding: “We should first start there.”
Wessels said there were towns in the Free State that had been without water for 14 days.
In December, a survey conducted by the Freedom Front Plus found that 38 towns in the Free State had “no or very limited access to water”. The party said at the time that in Parys, the waterworks were not functioning optimally and some residents had been without water for 40 days.
Towns such as Wepener, Ventersburg, Brandfort, Theunissen, Winburg and Edenville had had no water for more than two months, the party said.
Wessels told Majodina that there was “no hope” in some small Free State towns.
“There have been certain interventions with boreholes but the department has failed to provide the necessary equipment … that is not because of higher consumption and people wasting water,” he said.