ABSTRACT
The democratic election of a new government in South Africa in 1994 was a huge turning point not only for the country as a whole but also in terms of water distribution and services legislation. The new Constitution (1996) was followed by a Water Services Act (WSA, in 1997) and a National Water Act (NWA, in 1998). These statutes were aimed at the redressing of past inequalities based on race and gender and made poverty eradication a major guiding principle of the new nation. The application of these principles to water makes South Africa one of the few countries in which water is seen as a fundamental tool for achieving social justice and pro-poor economic growth (Van Koppen et al, 2003). The tool has two important axes: redistribution and decentralization (or democratization):
Redistribution is about redressing the inequitable situation that was inherited from the Apartheid era: while only about 45 per cent of the black population had piped water in 1994, about 100 per cent of the other groups could access it. Inequities in water are one symptom (and cause) of wider social inequalities: in 1994 South Africa's Gini-coefficient, which measures the degree of inequality, stood at 0.61, close to the figure for Brazil, which then had the highest level of inequality of the world (Klasen, 1997; Corder, 1997). Since the abolishment of Apartheid in 1994, however, all inhabitants have in theory been equal and all remnants of poverty and oppression in the past are to be removed. First on the agenda of the Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP) of the first post-apartheid government was meeting basic needs, which are: ‘jobs, land, housing, water, electricity, telecommunication, transport, a clean and healthy environment, nutrition, health care and social welfare’ (ANC, 1994, p7 in Corder, 1997). Free basic water for all, and a more equal distribution of water for productive means (eg agriculture, mining and industry) are seen as important instruments to achieve the new goals and the Department of Water Affairs and Forestry (DWAF) has put several mechanisms in place to try and get the relevant instruments working. Basic water needs were set at 25 litres of clean water per capita per day, from a tap no further than 200 metres from the homestead. In early 2000, just after the reelection of the ANC, the Free Basic Water (FBW) policy was launched. This policy is aimed at providing all South Africans with those water services that are regarded as basic under the RDP for free. From the standard per person, the DWAF moved to a more workable standard of 6000 litres per household per month. After this, it launched a framework around the FBW policy aimed at ‘stepping up the ladder’ (DWAF, 2003), improving water and sanitation services for poor households step-by-step. One part of that framework looks at cost recovery mechanisms to finance the free basic water for the poor.
Decentralization is about increasing and improving the participation of all citizens in the formulation and implementation of water policies. In principle, the management of water resources is regarded as a national task, with the national department, DWAF, as its main executor. DWAF Regional Offices also have a lot of ruling power in terms of water resources. For domestic water supplies, though, provincial and local government have a strong say. Most important in the terms of this chapter is that the realization of the domestic water policy targets as stipulated in the WSA largely depends on the functioning of the newly created local government bodies. In most cases, municipalities are responsible for implementing the FBW policy and for part of the cost recovery, assisted by the DWAF, the Department of Provincial and Local Government (DPLG), the National Treasury and South African Local Government Association (SALGA). Part of the financing of free basic services (including water) comes from the so-called ‘Equitable Share’, a tool to redistribute tax revenues both vertically (from national to local level) and horizontally (at provincial and sometimes local levels). Next to that, and starting in 2005, all DWAF personnel working on domestic water supply delivery at local levels are supposed to be transferred to the municipalities. The DWAF will then only keep the responsibility for monitoring water quality and for integrated water resources management. At the community level water distribution is to be organized by water committees. These are to be democratic and equitable, fairly representing the water users. In most communities, water committees did already exist before the WSA was accepted but functioned as one of the committees representing the traditional authority. According to the democratic guidelines the WSA stipulated, the existing committees were often not ‘equitably representative’ nor did they function in a democratic way.
