ABSTRACT
This chapter is reprinted and adapted with permission from Environment & Urbanization 20(1): 67–87. Available at https://eau.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/20/1/67.
This paper was first published in Environment & Urbanization in 2008. Since then, further progress has been made in the provision of free basic water to the people of South Africa. The process, however, has not been without controversy. In 2009, a legal challenge by a coalition of community groups to the policy as well as to the application of pre-paid meters reached South Africa’s Constitutional Court. The Court ruled that policy as implemented as well as the application of prepaid meters “falls within the bounds of reasonableness” and did not violate the Constitutional right to water as had been claimed. In its judgement, the Court nonetheless highlighted the value of the legal challenge:
Government must disclose what it has done to formulate the policy: its investigation and research, the alternatives considered, and the reasons why the option underlying the policy was selected. The Constitution does not require government to be held to an impossible standard of perfection. Nor does it require courts to take over the tasks that in a democracy should properly be reserved for the democratic arms of government. Simply put, through the institution of the courts, government can be called upon to account to citizens for its decisions. This understanding of social and economic rights litigation accords with the founding values of our Constitution and, in particular, the principles that government should be responsive, accountable and open.
This chapter highlights many of the underlying issues and the process by which the “free basic water” policy was derived and implemented.
