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THE fifth estate: Dead in the Water
South Africa> Printer Version
Broadcast
March 31, 2004
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.
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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.
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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.
NELSPRUIT: EXPANDING THE WATER NETWORK
The city of Nelspruit is a 3-hour drive east of Johannesburg on the Mozambique
border. Old Nelspruit is white and prosperous and serviced by a water
network. But when Nelpsruit expanded post-apartheid to include the surrounding
townships, it inherited 240,000 people without water and basic sanitation.
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Martin Nizsse, local manager of the private utility: There’s definitely a water shortage. And that’s a global problem. And I think with the water shortage, you have to manage it properly. And the market mechanism is normally a way of managing these shortages to provide people a good service.
PAYING FOR CLEAN DRINKING WATER
GNUC has laid 90 km of new water pipelines and 17 km of new sewage pipelines.
They have installed 7240 new water meters and made 5000 new water connections.
Company managers expected to earn back the money spent on these expansions
through increased water tariffs. However, what they encountered was a
poor and defiant population that can’t and won’t pay its water
bills.
Henry Nkuna was a freedom fighter who now fights the water
company.
Henry Nkuna: First thing, we are unemployed,
most of us. And if you are expecting a person who is unemployed who survives
with a loaf of bread with 6 children, how do you expect that person to
pay for water?
Local manager Martin Nizsse hadn’t anticipated the
problem.
Martin Nizsse:
We have installed and improved the services. And we expected the people
in that area to pay, because if they continued to pay, more money was
made available to pay off the loans for this investment. Unfortunately,
that didn’t happen at the speed we thought. Actually, it fell flat
on its face.
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Linden MacIntyre: What
will you do when they make you pay for water?
Anita Khoza: It’s
going to be difficult, yes, because I’m even struggling to get food
for my children. I really don’t know …
In the township where Khoza lives, Kanyamazane, only 20% of water customers are paying their bills.
PRIVATE WATER BAILOUT
The Greater Nelspruit Utility Company says it can no longer afford to
fulfill its obligations under the contract because of a “culture
of non-payment.” In order to save the concession, GNUC has demanded
that the municipal government forgive lease payments, increase subsidies
and agree to a million-rand rescue package.
The company has resorted to a drastic measure to encourage
people to pay their water bills – repossessing their homes.
Anna Xaba faces eviction if she doesn’t pay thousands of rand in
water bills. Not only is she not paying for water now, she never has in
her entire life.
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Anna Xaba: I don’t have that kind of money and there is no way I can get that kind of money. From the time I was born I haven’t bought water. We used to get water everywhere to drink. I can’t understand why these people are selling water to us. Do they make the water?
Martin Nizsse is unsympathetic.
Martin Nizsse: I think the real message for these people is that they shouldn’t let it come so far that they go so far in arrears. They have to learn that they have to save water to make sure that there is water available for everyone and that the water they use, they can afford that.
Patrick Bond is a political economist at the University of Witwatersand in Johannesburg.
Patrick Bond: You can attribute most of the non payment to people's inability to pay. Not a lack of desire to pay as is often claimed. African, black people have lost nineteen percent of their income since 1994. The government statistics show white's have increased their income by fifteen percent. People are just too poor to pay.
JOHANNESBURG: PRE-PAID METERS
With a population of 3 million, Johannesburg is South Africa’s biggest
city. Johannesburg Water, the city’s public water utility was formed
in 1999 as part of a transformation project by Johannesburg’s municipal
government. Lacking management expertise, the new company signed a management
contract in 2001 with a consortium led by the French company Suez. The
management company, called JOWAM, operates the water utility and fills
various management positions within Johannesburg Water.
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In an effort to keep bills paid and reduce water losses, the company has installed pre-paid water meters in some Johannesburg neighbourhoods. A pre-paid water meter is a water pump that is activated by a pre-paid card. People must pay in advance for what they use.
Mike Muller, Director General of Water
Affairs and Forestry: One great benefit is
that people don’t have to put up with the administration, the paperwork
of bills. It’s nice and predictable. You know how much you are paying.
Jeanette Nzuma lives with her family in Orange Farm, the biggest “informal
settlement” in South Africa. Located in the far south end of the
Johannesburg region, the settlement is home to about 350,000 people, most
of whom live in shacks and are unemployed. She and her husband salvage
their precious water supply however they can. Used wash water is poured
on the garden. The Nzuma’s water used to come from a free communal
tap. Now, they must buy it from a pre-paid meter.
RECOVERING THE COST OF CLEAN WATER
Experiments with pre-paid water meters have a bleak history in South Africa.
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In the late 1990s, local governments across South Africa were encouraged to practice more rigorous financial management and cost recovery. A local water board, which had taken over responsibility for water service in the Madlebe area, was given the task of installing prepaid meters. This included converting the nine communal water taps.
Between 1997 and 2000 prepaid meters were installed throughout the area. The water board saw the taps as a way to prevent arrears and improve their cash flow. The local authorities argued that cost recovery was necessary in this area because of the absence of industry or wealthy households that could subsidize water delivery to the poor.
A CHOLERA OUTBREAK
A connection fee of 50 Rand, about $10 Canadian, allowed people to use
the prepaid meters. But in an area where the average monthly income is
about 500 Rand, the connection fee was beyond reach. Unable to pay, many
people turned once again to nearby streams and rivers for water. The decision
was deadly – the rivers were infected with cholera.
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The areas previously served by the communal taps were part
of the first areas hit with cholera. The deadly disease, which causes
severe diarrhea and dehydration that, untreated, leads to death, spread
like wildfire. The first cases were reported in August 2000. By December
2000 the number of victims was in the thousands. By the time the outbreak
was contained, 120,000 people were infected with cholera and 265 had died.
The federal water ministry had to step in with water trucks to provide
Madlebe with clean water. Fifty tanks were also installed. The government
spent close to 1 million rand containing the outbreak. All the prepaid
meters were re-converted to communal taps payable on a 25-rand/per month,
flat-rate system.
NEW "FREE WATER" POLICY
Partly in response to the cholera outbreak, the South African government
initiated a "free water policy" in February 2000. Every household
in South Africa is entitled to 6000 litres of free water every month.
The amount represents the absolute minimum daily use per person (25 litres)
for an eight-person household. By comparison, a Canadian household of
eight people would use 82,320 litres/ month - thirteen times more - the
difference between a water-rich, first-world country, and a water-scarce,
African country struggling to deliver clean, affordable water to the poor.
the fifth estate: DEAD
IN THE WATER
Broadcast on the
fifth estate Wednesday, March 31 2004
on CBC-TV at 8PM
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