A harvest of neglect

South Africa has a long history of living with drought. The El Nino Southern Oscillation warm events cause frequent hot and dry spells in the country, the most recent of which lasted between 2017 and 2022. During the 2015 drought, described by some as “epic” the City of Cape Town issued Day Zero declaration – the official day that it would no longer be able to deliver water to its residents – and Rand Water made preparations to start restricting water to Johannesburg residents. However, weather droughts have been amplified in recent years by another crisis: neglect. The Water Services Act requires the government to provide 25 litres of potable water per consumer per day or six kilolitres per month to a household. However, this target is not being met. Consider the following data from the National Water and Sanitation Masterplan: over 3 million people still do not have access to a basic water supply service and 14.1 million people do not have access to safe sanitation; only 64 % of households have access to a reliable water supply service 56% of wastewater treatment works and 44% of water treatment works are in a poor or critical condition. 11% are dysfunctional; more than 50% of South Africa’s wetlands have been lost, and of those that remain, 33% are in poor ecological condition; municipalities are losing about 1660 million m³ per year through nonrevenue water. At a unit cost of R6/m³, this amounts to R9.9 billion each year. South Africa witnesses at least five hundred service delivery protests every year. Most of them are related to jobs, electricity and water. Municipalities have traditionally neglected investments in water infrastructure, preferring instead to focus on short-term projects with high visibility. In Gauteng, businesses along the Vaal River system - the main source of water for the entire province – have been dumping untreated sewage into the river for decades. It took an intervention from SANDF for a major clean-up to start there. In Hammanskraal, some suburbs have not had pipe-borne water for years. Many parts of the community are still without water. In the Eastern Cape, parts of Makanda and Nelson Mandela Bay Metro have been relying on water tanks because the pipe networks are either too unreliable or non-existent. All residents of Makanda, rich and poor, now have to buy water from a supermarket on a regular basis. In Kimberley, the main bulk water systems were turned off every night until the drought ended in 2022. There are two problems plaguing the system. Major bulk water projects have either been stalled or neglected due to mismanagement or underinvestment. The completion date of the Lesotho Highlands Water Project II has been pushed to 2027 in part due to funding issues. Elsewhere, investments in the rollout of water reticulation systems is not keeping pace with demographic growth. According to the South African Human Rights Commission, “Violations to the right to access water and sanitation are unacceptably high in South Africa”. Some municipalities are overwhelmed. In the 2018 Mpumalanga Spatial Development Framework, the government of Mpumalanga admitted that “Mpumalanga had a challenge in facilitating basic water infrastructure over the last 15 years”. In Gauteng Province, the 12.3 thousand kilometres of water pipes need upgrading, weatherising and expansion. According to the Department of Water and Sanitation, South Africa is losing an average of R7.2 billion a year due to water leaks Some hard-hit communities have taken their municipality to court over failure to deliver services. In January 2020 the Makhanda High Court ordered the Makana Municipal Council to be dissolved, adding that its ongoing failure to provide services to the residents of Makhanda was unconstitutional. Water challenges also caused major cholera outbreaks every year in the 2010s. Recently in 2022, at least 30 people died in KwaZulu and in 2023, cholera claimed the lives of 20 people in Hammanskraal, North of Pretoria. All these cases are happening in towns where there is insufficient access to potable water. Load shedding is responsible for some of the challenges. South Africa has been witnessing load shedding daily in 2023. What that does is that it makes it impossible to pump and clean enough water to send out to communities. After A Harvest of Drought, this second part A Harvest of Neglect looks at the major challenges plaguing South Africa.