Barbara Schreiner

Catchment Management Agencies for poverty eradication in South Africa

Abstract This paper discusses the changes in water law in South Africa since the new dispensation. The focus is on the poverty dimensions of the early experiences of implementation of one of the components of the National Water Act: the establishment of Catchment Management Agencies (CMAs). From a diversity of recent experiences in decentralizing integrated water resources management, key areas emerge where future actions by the government are crucial to establish pro-poor, developmental CMAs.

Moving beyond integrated water resource management: developmental water management in South Africa

This article traces the history of integrated water resources management (IWRM) in South Africa since the 1970s. It examines IWRM according to its three common pillars, which are also reflected in South Africas National Water Act: economic efficiency, environmental sustainability, and equity. The article highlights how the principles of economic efficiency and the environment as a user in its own right emerged under apartheid, while equity was only included in the post-1994 water policies, with evolving influence on the other two principles. In 2013, the Department of Water Affairs overcame the widely documented flaws of IWRM by adopting developmental water management as its water resource management approach, aligning with the political and socio-economic goals of South Africas democratic developmental state.

Lessons and Conclusions

This book discusses some issues of water policy and its implementation in South Africa. This chapter highlights some key, overarching issues related to the implementation of water policy in South Africa. These issues are discussed in the context of good water governance, based on three principles: a professional bureaucracy; predictable, open and enlightened policy making; and a strong civil society active in public affairs. The chapter closes with some discussion on some of the key challenges and priority actions in moving forward.

Rights-Based Freshwater Governance for the Twenty-First Century: Beyond an Exclusionary Focus on Domestic Water Uses

The UN recognition of a human right to water for drinking, personal and other domestic uses and sanitation in 2010 was a political breakthrough in states’ commitments to adopt a human rights framework in carrying out part of their mandate. This chapter explores other domains of freshwater governance in which human rights frameworks provide a robust and widely accepted set of normative values to such governance. The basis is General Comment No. 15 of the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights in 2002, which states that water is needed to realise a range of indivisible human rights to non-starvation, food, health, work and an adequate standard of living and also procedural rights to participation and information in water interventions. On that basis, the chapter explores concrete implications of the Comment for states’ broader infrastructure-based water services implied in the recognised need to access to infrastructure, rights to non-discrimination in public service delivery and respect of people’s own prioritisation. This implies a right to water for livelihoods with core minimum service levels for water to homesteads that meet both domestic and small-scale productive uses, so at least 50–100 l per capita per day. Turning to the state’s mandates and authority in allocating water resources, the chapter identifies three forms of unfair treatment of small-scale users in current licence systems. As illustrated by the case of South Africa, the legal tool of “Priority General Authorisations” is proposed. This prioritises water allocation to small-scale water users while targeting and enforcing regulatory licences to the few high-impact users.

The Political, Social and Economic Context of Changing Water Policy in South Africa Post-1994

This chapter describes the political, social and economic context in which South Africa’s water reform was designed and implemented. The water reform was part of the nation’s wider transformation after 1994 from white minority rule and territorial and institutional segregation, to a democratic, non-racial state. This implied a major challenge to redress the legacy of gross inequities in access to water for domestic and productive uses and the persistently high poverty levels, especially in the rural areas. For a better understanding of the continuities and changes from the past for all aspects of water reform discussed in this volume, the history of water development and management in apartheid South Africa is traced. This encompasses the removal of land and water rights from black South Africans by the early 1900s; the hydraulic mission for white agriculture throughout the twentieth century; and the emergence of the centrally planned, urban-industrialized water economy from the 1970s onwards. Many concepts that would globally be seen as ‘best practice’ Integrated Water Resource Management according to the Dublin principles of 1992 originate in that era. The chapter concludes by introducing the subsequent chapters in this light.

Mainstreaming Gender in Water Management in South Africa

Gender mainstreaming figures high in the post-1994 policies and laws in South Africa in general, and water policies in particular. This chapter analyses the implementation of these policies in two domains: within DWAF as a gender-sensitive workplace with sound gender training of its staff, and externally in the performance of DWAF in implementing its mandate for the benefit of all its citizens, in particular poor black women. In this task, gender concerns were effectively mainstreamed as part of the general efforts to democratise water management, especially in the creation of new equitable institutions such as Catchment Management Agencies and in public participation processes. Changes appeared more difficult in existing male-dominated institutions, though. With regard to the core issue of improving women’s access to water, the water services efforts implicitly benefitted women in particular. In contrast, women’s access to water for small-scale productive uses has deteriorated.