Along with crime, water has become the single most important issue for many South Africans. (Delwyn Verasamy/M&G)
Along with crime, water has become the single most important issue for many South Africans — from large cities like Johannesburg to smaller towns such as Knysna and rural areas including Giyani, President Cyril Ramaphosa said in his State of the Nation address on Thursday.
“We have all seen the pain that our people have been expressing through demonstrations in various parts of Gauteng,” Ramaphosa said. “These protests have been fuelled by the frustrations that our people are feeling over inadequate, unreliable access to basic services such as water.”
He said he had instructed the minister of water and sanitation and her deputy, as well as the minister of cooperative governance and traditional affairs, to intervene directly in the crisis.
“I have directed the minister of water and sanitation and her deputy, as well as the minister of cooperative governance, to attend to the water shortage problem and engage with our communities,” he said, to applause.
“As we speak, they are in Gauteng, engaging with our people, explaining to them precisely how the government intends to immediately deal with the challenges that our people are experiencing. They inform me that the pipes that have been damaged are being repaired and that reservoirs are filling up again.” More applause erupted in the chamber.
Ramaphosa said the deepening water crisis stemmed largely from poor planning and years of inadequate maintenance of water systems by many of the country’s municipalities. “The main cause of the problems is now the reason why we are having empty taps,” he said.
He stressed that “there is no silver bullet to address this challenge”, which has its roots in systemic failures and “many years of neglecting infrastructure”.
To ensure water security over the long term, Ramaphosa said the government was building new dams and upgrading infrastructure. It had committed R156 billion in public funding for water and sanitation infrastructure over the next three years.
He said construction of Phase 2 of the Lesotho Highlands Water Project and other large-scale projects were advancing and that the government was in the final stages of establishing a National Water Resource Infrastructure Agency to effectively manage the country’s water infrastructure and mobilise funding.
“However, the real challenge lies not in the availability of water but in getting water to people’s taps,” Ramaphosa said.
The Water Services Amendment Bill, he said, would enable the government to hold water service providers accountable for their performance and where necessary, withdraw their licences.
“If they don’t perform, we must be able to withdraw their licence if they do not deliver,” he said. “If a municipality is not willing or able to provide a service to its residents, then it must be done by another structure that can do so. These reforms will address the root causes of the water crisis.”
In the short term, Ramaphosa said the government needed to confront the immediate crisis of water outages being experienced across the country.
“Three years ago, when we were experiencing daily power cuts, we established the national energy crisis committee to enable a focused national response,” he said. “We overcame what seemed like an insurmountable challenge by adopting a clear plan and delivering on it.”
Using the same approach, the government would elevate its response to the water crisis by establishing a national water crisis committee, which he would chair.
The structure would bring together all existing efforts into a single coordinating body. Ramaphosa said the deputy president had been working with several water authorities and that the initiatives would be coordinated to ensure an effective response.
The committee would deploy technical experts and resources from the national government to municipalities facing water challenges and ensure that action was taken swiftly and effectively.
“To address the challenges effectively, we will not hesitate to use the powers that are enshrined in our Constitution and in the Water Services Act to intervene in municipalities where necessary,” Ramaphosa said.
The national government, he warned, would intervene decisively. “We will hold to account those who neglect their responsibility to supply water to our people.”
The government had laid criminal charges against 56 municipalities that had failed to meet their obligations and would move to lay charges against municipal managers for violating the National Water Act.
“The critical problem is that in many metros, cities and towns, water revenue is being used for other purposes and very little is invested in upgrading and maintaining water infrastructure,” he said.
To address that, Ramaphosa said, the government had introduced a new R54 million incentive for metros to reform their water and sanitation and electricity services.
“This will ensure that revenue from water usage is put straight back into fixing pipes, repairing reservoirs and upgrading pumping stations,” he said.
Persistent water outages were a symptom of a local government system that was no longer functioning as it should. “A far-reaching overhaul is now under way to address the root causes of dysfunction in many of our municipalities,” he said.