| SOUTH AFRICA:
STRUGGLING TO PROVIDE SAFE DRINKING WATER TO THE
POOR
South Africa is a country in transition.
Although apartheid ended a decade ago, its legacy
of poverty and inequality lives on. While white
South Africa’s standard of living is on par
with the developed world, black South Africa more
closely resembles the rest of the continent –
poor and without services. Electricity, running
water and modern sanitation are in almost every
home in white South Africa, while only a quarter
of black South African households have such basic
amenities.
12 MILLION PEOPLE
WITHOUT SAFE DRINKING WATER
When apartheid ended in 1994,
South Africa faced an enormous infrastructure backlog.
Twelve million people were not covered by the main
water and sanitation delivery networks, which meant
they had to buy water at exorbitant prices from
informal vendors. The newly elected ANC government
made expanding water delivery to South Africa’s
millions of poor a key development issue. The new
South African constitution, considered to be one
of the most progressive in the world on basic economic
rights, promised clean water to all its citizens.
READ ABOUT
THE MILLENIUM DEVELOPMENT GOALS FOR WATER >
Mike
Muller, Director General of Water Affairs and Forestry:
We were looking at 12 million
people in South Africa who didn’t have access
to any kind of safe water in 1994. We’re talking
about nearly 20 million who didn’t have any
kind of sanitation. And we said that the focus would
be on people who had nothing. We had a slogan, ‘Some
for all, not all for some,’ and that was really
what drove us, particularly the 12 million without
access to safe water.
Compounding the problem was something
that plagues the entire African continent: a scarcity
of water. There are only 30 countries out of 180
in the world that have less water per person than
South Africa.
THE WORLD BANK AS "KNOWLEDGE
BANK"
Since the early 1990s when The
World Bank re-initiated its relationship with South
Africa, the institution has seen the country as a
place to develop its position as “knowledge
bank.” South Africa has only received two small
loans from The World Bank since 1994, however, the
bank has played a significant role as advisor, providing
technical assistance and policy advice throughout
its transition from apartheid to democracy. In the
early nineties, the bank helped South Africa quantify
the costs of improving infrastructure. When the country
was faced with the enormous expense of bringing water
and sanitation to millions, The World Bank advocated
for greater private sector involvement.
Mike Muller:
We were being visited
ten times a year by international agencies, not
coming to ask us ‘how do you want help to
run water,’ but, ‘we will show you how
to use the private sector to provide water.
The South African government has experimented
with private delivery of water in a small handful
of concessions around the country. Ninety-seven
per cent of the country’s water utilities
are still publicly operated, as pointed out by Minister
of Water and Forestry, Ronnie Kasrils, in his address
to the African Investment Forum on the Involvement
of the Private Sector in Water and Sanitation in
April, 2003.
Ronnie Kasrils:
The private sector has played and will continue
to play an important role in both water resources
and water services. The challenges facing us are
simply too big to be addressed by government alone.
… The government will always retain responsibility
for ensuring that there is adequate water services
provision. The vast majority of water services providers
are expected to remain in the hands of public utilities.
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