DRAFT
Comprehensive Assessment
Research Paper 3
Redressing Racial Inequities through
Water law in South Airica: Revisiting
Old Contradictions?
Barbara van Koppen
Nitish Jha
and
Douglas J. Merrey
Comprehensive Assessment of Water Management
in Agriculture
The outhors: zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA
Barbara van Koppen is a Senior Researcher, Nitish Jha, a Post-Doctoral Scientist
and Douglas J. Merrey, Principal Researcher and Regional Director for Africa, all of the
International Water Management Institute (IWMI). All three authors are based in IWMI’s Africa
office in Pretoria, South Africa.
All maps used in this paper were created by Jnlien Cour. For the graphic of the IWRM cube,
conceived of by Barbara van Koppen, the authors are grateful to Krishna Prasad.
van Koppen, Barbara: Jha, Nitish: and Merrey, D.J. 2002. Redressing racial inequities through
water law in South Africa: Revisiting old contradictions? Comprehensive Assessment
Research Paper 3 (Draft). Colombo, Sri Lanka: Comprehensive Assessment Secretariat.
Please send inquiries and comments to: comp.assessment @cgiar.org
Website: www.iwmi.org/assessment
Contents
Abstract.
............................................................
I
I . Introduction .................................................
1
2. History of Water Law in South Africa ............................
2
3. Water Law in the New Dispensation
...........................................
9
4. Establishment of Catchment Management Agencies .......
14 zyxwvutsrqponml
5. Conclusions: Redressing Inequities in the Future ..................................................
19
Literature Cited
23
based on race and gender as well as poverty eradication as major guiding principles of the new
nation. The application of these principles to the management of one of its scarcc resources, viz.,
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. This is especially significant because,
worldwide, profcssionals in the water sector tend to confine their concerns for poverty alleviation
in water management to water supply for domestic purposes. It is true that the lack of access to
clean. near, and affordable water for domestic purposes is a critical dimension of poverty. However,
poverty is a much broader phenomenon and encompasses a range of interrelated dimensions of
deprivation. Income poverty and socio-political exclusion are other dimensions of ill being, which
are directly related to water. The water law in South Africa seeks to redress inequities and to
contribute to poverty eradication in productive uses of water as well (Kasrils 2002).
The early years of implementation of the National Water Act (NWA) highlight how formal
law can be made to either serve or subvert these ends. The process of implementation, therefore,
has to be understood in light of the socio-political and economic context of the past (section 2)
and its links with the present, including the new governance stmctures in which water management
in South Africa is embedded (section 3). The three actors in the contemporary scenario are the
new Department of Water Afpairs and Forestry (or DWAF), the former vested interests (whites
and their institutions), and the group that was historically disadvantaged (black individuals and
communities). Both whites and blacks respond very differently to DWAFs actions in its role as
the initiator of the implementation process. The former vested interests seek to maintain the
inequities of the past by trying to restrict any changes to cosmetic ones and also by actively
scanning the new law for opportunities they can exploit, for instance, the space it provides for
public participation. In contrast, black individuals and communities-including the newly elected
local government, which is predominantly black-challenge such attempts made by these vested
interests while articulating their own needs and aspirations. In this contest about the intentions
and aims of the nation’s new legislation for people’s lives, DWAF acts as an arbiter that
continuously interprets the law and as an implementer of programs meant to empower the poor,
once and for all, in the arena of water management.
The establishment of the Catchment Management Agency (CMA) in the Olifants River Basin
provides a good illustration of the outcomes at stake in this struggle (section 4). Decentraliaation
of water management and the gradual devolution of power to water users organized in new
Catchment Management Agencies are central to the new water law. The Olifants River Basin is
the country’s second pilot project. Hence, the lessons that can be learnt from it (section 5) are
important for future CMAs in South Africa. These experiences are also relevant for many other
governments in the developing world today, which are engaged in water reform and which attempt
to combat poverty by devolving water management authority to the public through new river basin
organizations (Wester, Merrey and de Langc, forthcoming).
2. History of Water Law in South Africa
South Africa, in the apartheid era prior to 1991, was a country riven by formal racial divisions.
Under a comprehensive policy of racial segregation, implemented in an attempt to isolate and
subjugate the black majority, the government of the white republic of South Africa instituted a
program of “Separate Development.” One of its actions therein was to carve out a number of
black “states” within the country’s boundaries.’
Comprising no more than 13.5 percent of the country’s area, these ten arbitrarily created
administrative territories--called zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA
Bantustans or Homelands (figure 1)-were allegedly the original
areas of settlement of what the state had identified as the country’s nine main African ethnic groups,
which accounted for more than 75 percent of the population. Within these territories, several of
which were highly fragmented, black South Africans could ostensibly aspire to self-rule (Ross
1999:135).2In reality, these areas-whose nominal autonomy went unrecognized intemationallyserved merely as dumping grounds for blacks who were deemed in excess of numbers acceptable
within the white republic. They acted as pooled reserves of labor from where black men-and
women, to a lesser degree-went to work for long periods in white South Africa. Those who were
left behind, women for the most part, were relegated to the roles of sustainers of households and
caregivers for children, the sick and the elderly (Omer-Cooper 1994: 193-221). Moreover, the
Homelands were rendered economically unviable given that forced removals led to huge population
densities that often far exceeded the land’s carrying capacity (Ross 1999: 126, 145-148). Thus,
the black population was strictly controlled and its members made to assume the role of laborers
in the white economy while their own agriculture in the former Homelands was systematically
underdeveloped (Yawitch 198 I ; Unterhalter 1987). The new multiracial government of South
Africa, which was elected to power through universal franchise in 1994, continues to be bedeviled
by the institutions put in place by its predecessor.
One of the most noticeable legacies of apartheid in South Africa is the huge extent of poverty
and the prevalence of stark inequities in access to all manner of resources. In 1994, 12 million
South Africans had no access to basic water supplies and 18 million were without sanitation
(Kasrils 2002). Unemployment rates in 1999 were 52 percent for African women between 15 and
65 years, and 37 percent for men in the same age group (Statistics South Africa 1999). Almost 50
percent of the country’s population is income poor, spending less than Rand 353 (or US$ 30) per
adult equivalent per month.
Furthermore, 70 percent of the country’s poor live in rural areas. In few other countries is
income distribution as unequal as it is in South Africa (UNDP 2002: 194- 197). In South Africa’s
water sector, as elsewhere in its economy, the fault line between rich and poor closely mirrors
that between white and black users, respectively.
The distribution of land resources is highly skewed with 13 percent of the population-who
are white-wning 87 percent of available land (Lahiff 1999; Cousins 2000). Available evidence
shows that inequities in access to water may even be wider. As much as 95 percent of water for
irrigation is used by large-scale fanners, while smallholders only have access to the remaining
5 percent (de Lange 1998). In the Mhlatuze Basin in KwaZulu-Natal Province, a mere 10 percent
of the population has access to more than 97 percent of available water resources, and only a
very small part of the benefits from the bulk of the water that this minority uses trickles down to
the remaining 90 percent of the basin’s population (Steyl, Versfeld and Nelson 2000).
‘As far back as 1913, it had created “African Reserves” under the Native (now “Black) Land Act, which not only
stipulated that blacks could only own land within specifically demarcated territories hut also denied them access to
sharecropping arrangements in areas outside these reserves. In 1948, racist policies got a boost with the election of
the National Party, which was exclusively Afrikaner. Forced removals of blacks from so-called white areas to the
reserves, later termed Homelands, officially began only after 1961 (Ross 1999).
>In fact, four nf the ten Homelands achieved “independence” from the Republic of South Africa, while the others were
considered as heing on the path to such self-determination when liberation from white rule was achieved.
s zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA
91
Apartheid Government Law
Under apartheid, the open embodiment of racism in law carried over into the water sector as well.
As a result, control over water in South Africa prior to 1994 is best understood in terms of the
co-existence of two formal but separate legal systems. These are: 1) the apartheid-era laws,
enforced within the white republic; and 2 ) the former Homeland laws. Although superseded by
the laws of the democratic South Africa, the two legal systems of the apartheid era continue to
profoundly influence the implementation of the post-apartheid water law because of the strengths,
in the case of the white republic, or the inherent weaknesses, in the case of the Homelands, of
the institutions they put in place.
Jurisdiction over water followed the geographical segregation of the apartheid regime. The
Department of Water Affairs (DWA) served the former white Republic of South Africa (RSA).
Here, water rights were primarily vested in riparian rights holders. Commercial farmers, an
important constituency of the apartheid government, greatly benefited from the services of the
DWA (later renamed the Department of Water Affairs and Forestry or DWAF) through highly
subsidized scheme and dam development. Gradually, however, the DWA started shifting its focus
to other important water users, such as power generation and industries, and also intensified water
quality management. By the mid-l980s, the first basin studies were undertaken in collaboration
with consulting firms that accumulated expertise for the area in which they were active. The first
ideas for Catchment Management Agencies also date back to this period (DWA 1986).
A considerable degree of self-management crystallized among the water users in the white
RSA. Democratically elected Irrigation Boards managed large-scale irrigation schemes and their
representatives participated effectively in national farmer organizations. Portions of rivers, in which
farmers had built weirs, were governed collectively. Large-scale water users also started to organize
at basin level. For example, in 1992, the Olifants River Forum was initiated to promote better
coordination between mines and a national park downstream of the Olifants River, on the one
hand, and the upstream mines, industries and the country’s largest electricity generation company,
on the other-all in common pursuit of a “healthy river.”
Thus, during the apartheid era, the white government, large-scale farmers, mining firms,
forestry enterprises and tourist companies established well-defined, formalized laws and wellorganized institutions, based on riparian rights, which ensured their permanent access to the
country’s scarce water resources.
Homeland Law
In contrast, in the former Homelands, formal authority over water was vested in the Homeland
governments, which were represented at the community level by tribal chiefs and councils (hut
cf. Thompson et al. 2001: 16).3Each Homeland government implemented its control over water
’These repressive governments were, for the most p“lt, vassal states of the white RSA. With its backing, they dismantled
the structures of traditional chiefdoms as they had existed for centuries and replaced them with their minions who were
hardly accountable to the local communities they were in charge of administering (Ross 1999: 127, 135.136, 177).
Therefore, as chiefs became salaried government officials, staying in office at the whim of a government that was beholden
to the while South African state, they also risked losing their legitimacy to rule in the eyes of their followers This nexus
between Homeland governments and the apartheid state explains some of the animosity people feel towards chiefs even
today and may also explain the attempts made by the post-I994 governments to replace the authority of the chiefs with
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and delegated managerial responsibilities in its own way. As documentation and analysis of these
various formal legal systems have been extremely limited, only broad and impressionistic remarks
can be made here. Generally, these governments undertook some rural drinking water supply
schemes. Within rural communities, chiefs and their headmen were the main contact persons for
the Homeland government and any other outsiders intervening in issues concerning water supply
facilities. Specific tasks, such as the operation and maintenance of water supply systems, were
usually delegated to members of the tribal council, who then formed the relevant committees.
Most Homeland governments also initiated state-subsidized irrigation schemes in collaboration
with Development Corporations, which were parastatal organizations investing in rural
development. These schemes were usually the only effort to improve agricultural development
and, for that matter, access to irrigation water in the Homelands. These endeavors were dominated
entirely by outside agencies, with neither any formal power for the local chiefs and councils nor
any empowerment of the farmers themselves, the majority of whom were women. Formal
ownership and management of land and water in these irrigation schemes and, sometimes, the
management of farming and water management operations, credit provision, and marketing
remained with these parastatals. Formal water rights for irrigation schemes were also in the names
of governments or agencies. However, chiefs played important de facto roles in land reallocation.
The domination of the state and of parastatals in these irrigation schemes became particularly
evident when the new government suddenly withdrew support in the late 1990s, as a result of
which most of these irrigation schemes collapsed in whole or in part!
Mines intending to operate in temtoria of specific chiefs also approached them for permission.
Even where Homeland governments gave them formal permission, none of the concomitant
responsibilities were adhered to. The mines, which considered both laud and water resources in
the Homelands as open access resources (i.e., resources that were not owned), used this
unwarranted assumption as a carte blanche to pollute such resources without taking on the
commitment to clean up.
While most questions about the interface between government officials and chiefs in formal
water law in the former Homelands are yet to be answered, even more study is required to
understand the arrangements within black rural communities that governed water development
and management in the Homeland areas. As the authority of chiefs typically concerned all resources
of the community, the ultimate say over water infrastructure development-such as small reservoirs
for use by humans and livestock, water allocation, and water pollution issues-also fell to the
chief and the tribal council. Anecdotal evidence describes how chiefs set and enforced rules to
solve problems of water pollution, or convened meetings to resolve conflicts between users of
water for domestic purposes and irrigators. These practices and norms were embedded in a
'Until now, the government has done little lo reinstall farm supporl systems and to accord farmers formal title to water
and land rights. In some cases, large-scale farmers, white or sometimes hlack, have used this legal impasse to occupy
the collapsed schemes and start cultivating, using lhe idle irrigation infrastructure and extracting water without any
payment. In one such case, a while farmer took over a large tract of land in the Flag Boshielo (former Arabie) scheme
in the Olifants Basin by paying a substantial hrihe to the local chief and petty amounts as "land rent"-hut only for
the first year-to the farmers that occupied the land previously. In order to cultivate this land, this farmer brings along
his own laborers but also creates limited unskilled agricultural employment for some laborers from the area itself.
This minimal "gain" divides the local population and blocks any attempts at effective protest against his modus operandi.
The provincial government sued lhe farmer in a court case over the land issue. But despite 2 years having passed, the
case has seen no progress.
particular cosmology that regarded water as a powerful resource? This comprehensive set of sociopolitical arrangements of rules, norms as well as practices of water use and control that prevail in
poor rural communities can be called “communal water tenure,” analogous to the much more
common concept of communal land tenure, which often derived from the same sources of authority
(cf. Cousins 2000).
Communal water tenure is intrinsically integrated. In poor rural communities, the same water
source is often used simultaneously for (un-piped) drinking water, other domestic uses and a diverse
range of productive purposes. Sanitation and waste management often directly affect water sources
as well. For instance, water-focused development, with government aid, for one group of villagers
can easily detract from the welfare of other users and may jeopardize the fulfillment of people’s
basic needs. In short, water tenure in rural communities forms a seamless whole as different
members of such communities use the same water source for multiple purposes. It is only in the
view of theorists that this phenomenon-when adequately magnified, say, to basin level-is
accorded the term “integrated water resources management.” This contention is not as obvious as
it may seem.
At least in the case of South Africa, the realization that one is dealing with two vastly different
social and economic realities is crucially important. The level of socioeconomic and infrasuuctural
development in areas that were under white control far exceeds even the current state of
development of areas that were under the former Homelands. It would he misguided then to apply
a solution that works or worked in the former to a problem that confronts one in the latter (cf.
Shah, Makin and Sakthivadivel 2001). The majority of poor black communities are still resident
in the ex-Homeland areas. In these places, greater community mobilization is needed to resolve
problems of water supply and management.
Consider figure 2, in which the entire cube represents integrated water resources management
(IWRM). The x, y and z axes of the cube represent, respectively, (x) the multiple uses and users
of water; (y) the scale of the water resource under consideration, or else the site of its application;
and (z) the essential task(s) of water management related to the use in question. This view of
IWRM does nothing short of redefining all water management, both for domestic and productive
uses, in terms of multi-tiered basin organizations where the lowest tiers function within a frame
set by more aggregate decision-making. Important aggregate tasks concern upstream and
downstream allocation (or aquifer abstraction), flooding and drainage issues, pollution and soil
erosion. Localized infrastructure development and operation-nce allocation for water abstraction
is agreed upon-are examples of tasks to be dealt with by users in the lowest tier in the way they
see fit. The subsidiarity principle would call for such optimal autonomy at the lowest levels. This
means that a frame of operation is set at each level, while all possible decision-making on operation
below that level is left to the lowest level water users (see figure 2). Also, higher-level tiers would
’One such belief concerns the Mother River Serpent. She is claimed to own the water and live in water bodies, such
as dams, streams or groundwater. Above all, the Mother River Serpent needs to be kept content. Polluting water or,
reportedly, drilling modern boreholes are said to anger her and cause her to move away leaving c h a o s i n the form of
tornados 01 heavy tlooding-in her wake, which in turn adversely affects the existing water body or water course.
Traditional healers and prophets are said to stay for long periods i n deep waters to commune with her and acquire
powerful knowledge. Some of these traditional healers and “rainmakers” were renowned for their knowledge about
the weathcr and seasons and were consulted about the rieht t i m c to stml zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPO
c > i l t i v s t i m Fnrfher v n m ~~ n t i n m1u-7-
3. Water Law in the New Dispensation
Overall Aims
The transformation from the aforementioned legal systems to a new legislative framework for
the country in general and for water management in particular was a fundamental part of the
political events resulting from the end to the apartheid era in 1994. First, a new Constitution was
promulgated with the primary aims of (a) redress of past inequities based on race and gender and
(b) poverty eradication. The basic human right that “everyone has the right to have access to
sufficient food and water” is firmly anchored in Section 27 of the Constitution (RSA 1996). Other
overarching principles stipulated in the Constitution that are relevant for the new water law include
( I ) horizontal cooperation among and within government departments, and vertical cooperation
among the national, provincial and local levels of government, and ( 2 ) “Batho Pele,” which means
high quality service delivery by the government to all citizens.
With the abolition of the Homelands, the jurisdiction of the Department of Water Affairs and
Forestry (DWAF) became countrywide. It promulgated two laws that enshrined the new political
directions of the country in the domain of water management: the Water Services Act of 1997
(RSA 1997) and the National Water Act of 1998 (RSA 1998a). In line with the Constitution, water
management was expected to contribute to the principal objectives of meeting basic food and
water rights for all, eradicating poverty and redressing inequities from the past.
Cooperative governance, as stipulated in the Constitution, also figures prominently in the new
water law. In fact, it is even more relevant for water management as indicated above.
Strong cooperative governance entails, first and foremost, cooperative governance within
DWAF. In this case, it implies coordination in implementing the Water Services Act and the
National Water Act and collaboration among divisions of DWAF that are in charge of water supply,
water quality, groundwater, catchment management and institutional development, water resource
planning, information, modeling, and so on. An integrated delivery of water services is especially
important in rural areas where a single water source may be used for multiple purposes with uses
by one party often directly affecting uses by others.
Second, cooperative governance implies collaboration among the various government agencies.
This is also critical for the poor. In the past, high-volume users obtained access, often with
considerable state support, to the range of production factors that make a water-related enterprise
profitable. As a result, they succeeded in establishing large-scale and lucrative enterprises. In
contrast, poor people still lack access to the range of inputs, skills, technologies and markets that
render water-related enterprises more cost-effective. These arrears are to be overcome through
DWAF’s collaboration with the government departments of agriculture, land reform, health and
welfare, etc. Inasmuch as poverty is multi-dimensional, the attack on it warrants precisely such
an integrated approach.6
Another major issue in cooperative governance for pro-poor water management from the local
to basin level is the role of the local government (see below).
‘An example of improved collaboration between DWAF and the National and Provincial Departments of Agriculture
is the drafting of a new national policy to mainstream the marginalized through an integrated approach to agricultural
water use that also encompasses access to land, markets, credits, skills development, etc. Links are being created with
the Integrated Rural Development Program-established by Presidential decree-that is to be implemented through
. .
.
The Water Services Act
The Department of Water Affairs and Forestry promulgated the Water Services Act in 1997, even
before it drafted and disseminated the National Water Act. Political expediency was the main reason
for doing so as the backlog in rural drinking water supply inherited from the apartheid era was
enormous, especially in the former Homelands. In the new dispensation, DWAF had also become
responsible for rural water supply, including reticulation. This was a new task for DWAF, because
until 1994 it had only supplied bulk water to municipal water hoards in the white areas, which
then took care of reticulation. In 1994, this task was taken up by DWAF in cooperation with
democratically elected local government, which was just being put in place at that time. The
Department was further supported in this task by the Mvula Trust, an NGO specializing in
institutional and technical aspects of community water supply. In the long term, local governments
all over the country are expected to take over full responsibility for providing water services.
Right from the start the government took the policy decision to guarantee a domestic water
supply of 25 liters per person per day and committed itself to the provision of the infrastructure
required to deliver this quantity of water within 200 meters or less of all homes. In 2000, the
government further pledged that it would ensure that 6,000 liters of water for domestic purposes
would he delivered for free to each household, every month. (Larger quantities are to be charged
according to stepped tariffs.) In the years since it made these commitments, the government’s
efforts to achieve a minimum state of welfare-still a distant ideal for millions of poor black South
Africans-have been considerable, both in terms of infrastructure development and the organization
of delivery for free basic water.’ The National Water Act refers explicitly to the Water Services
Act and underlines the need for coordination in implementing these two complementary pieces
of legislation.
The National Water Act
Under the leadership of the first Minister of Water Affairs and Forestry, a nationwide process
was launched to elicit and incorporate public views and to harness global knowledge for the
formulation of the National Water Act, which was promulgated in 1998 (de Lange 2001). Thus,
the National Water Act not only broke radically with previous policy aims but also incorporated
what by then were nationally and globally recognized as “best principles for integrated water
management.” Such principles include the integration of surface water and groundwater
management, the gradual decentralization of water management to the lowest appropriate level,
self-financing of water management by user groups, public participation and community
involvement in water management, the preservation of water for ecological purposes, demand
management of water resources and, last but not least, a shift from administrative to hydrological
basin boundaries for water management, ultimately to be implemented by Catchment Management
Agencies (CMAs).
In the Act of 1998, the government put an end to the former system of permanent riparian
rights. In the new system of water rights, the government, as the custodian of the nation’s water
’The many problems of implementation on the ground notwithstanding, DWAF’s efforts to provide a basic quantity of
domestic water for free and also improve sanitation were the chief reasons why a poll in the weekly Mail & Guardian
(2001/2002: 12) ranked the Minister of Water Affairs and Forestry as one of the best performing ministers in the cabinet.
in
resources, guarantees water provision for uses stipulated in the National Water Reserve as a hasic
human right and authorizes water use for other ends. International obligations and strategically
important uses are prioritized. Authorizations take the form of either licenses,* general
authorizations or, for minor uses, permissions under the so-called Schedule One. The Act also
introduces water demand management and efficient water use in order to reduce water use by
some people and sectors, thus freeing up water for others.
The National Water Act emphasizes cooperative governance between DWAF and local
government, in conjunction with the cooperation stipulated in the Water Services Act. The Local
Government Act of 1998 also explicitly mentions the constitutional responsibilities of the local
government for water supply reticulation, sanitation and storm water management (RSA 199%:
58). The President’s Integrated Sustainable Rural Development Strategy (RSA ZOOl), which targets
local governments in the poorest former Homelands, articulates the development of water resources
for use in small-scale agriculture. Thus, the Integrated Development Plans (IDPs) of local
governments encompass, in principle, domestic and productive water uses besides other aspects
of integrated water management.
However, the capacities of the nascent local government are still fragile. After two rounds of
national elections since 1994 and stabilized administrative boundaries since 2000, this
democratically elected layer of government is still “finding its feet,” especially in poor rural areas
where no such structure existed previously. Hence the constant capacity building of local
government is already recognized as a major precondition for the successful implementation of
the Water Services Act. Although the Integrated Development Plans are yet to become effective
planning tools for productive water use, the role of local government as the lowest-level governance
body for integrated water management will only gain in importance.
Thus, the government of South Africa seeks to be reconciled with the previous formal law in
the former Homelands, which vested local resource management authority in only the traditional
chiefs. The new Constitution and the National Water Act recognize the primacy of the recent,
democratically elected local governments, which are frequently at loggerheads with the traditional
chiefs whose de facto influence continues (RSA 199%: 56, 58).y Therefore, depending on the
area in question, this equitable governance body-i.e., local government-continues to be
challenged either by the traditional, black authority structures or the former white municipality
leaders, both of whom retain some of their erstwhile power.
The questions of how these new governance layers concur with or contest, first, communal
water tenure arrangements embedded in the traditional power structures, second, attempts of the
former vested (white) interests to continue their own de facto control of water and, third, DWAF’s
own responses to the scenarios that confront it, are probably the most critical to answer whether
or not the goals of the Act of 1998-to redress inequities from the past-will be achieved.
“Licenses are granted for a maximum limit of 40 years, hut can he revised every 5 years. Pre-1994 “permits” are
gradually being changed into licenses, provided water is available or can be exchanged with others who are willing to
give up a pan or all of their allotment. All those who want to engage in new water uses have to apply for licenses,
which are only issued under similar conditions. Requests for licenses by historically disadvantaged water users receive
priority. “Stream flow reduction activities” by large-scale forestry estates, for instance, are also being licensed.
9This is over and above the fact that, subject to certain restrictions, traditional leaders may also participate constitutionally
in local zoveminents (RSA 1998b: 56). However, the extent of overlap between their mandate in customary matters
Relevant Components of the National Water Act
Besides the overarching aims of the Constitution, the Water Services Act, and the National Water
Act to redress inequities from the past and contribute to poverty eradication, and to ensure
cooperative governance, there are other components of the National Water Act that are extremely
relevant for understanding not only how the Act can potentially transform society hut also how
certain provisions built into the Act may thwart its stated objectives.
1.
Basic Human Water Needs: The National Water Act stipulates that the government
must, before catering to any other use, allocate a Reserve “to satisfy basic human needs
by securing a basic water supply as prescribed under the Water Services Act (1997).” As
indicated above, the government’s policy also entails the commitment to develop the
infrastructure required to meet these basic human needs and to ensure a minimum quantum
of water delivery for free. The Ecological Reserve is also a priority allocation under the
National Water Reserve.
2. Demographic Representation: According to the National Water Act, governance bodies
should he representative in terms of including sections of the population that were
previously unrepresented in governance forums--especially, blacks and women. The
Minister of Water Affairs and Forestry has far-reaching powers to ensure proportional or
demographic representation in new legal governance structures such as CMAs.
3. Compulsory Licensing f o r Water Reallocation: The legal tool in the National Water Act
that allows reallocation of water from high-volume users to poor water users is termed
Compulsory Licensing. DWAF can call for “compulsory licensing” where and when
needed. A project of compulsory licensing concerns all water users in a specific area. It
cancels all existing licenses and replaces them on the basis of a new allocation schedule.
Redressing race and gender inequities from the past is a key criterion for such a
reallocation. This is the case even if the reductions result “in severe prejudice to the
economic viability of an undertaking in respect of which the water was beneficially used.”
Normally, in such a situation, a person may appeal to the Water Tribunal for “compensation
for any financial loss suffered in consequence” (National Water Act, Sections 22 ( 6 )and
43 to 48).” The inclusion of this clause weakens the possibility of reallocating water.
Fortunately, there is a safeguard built into the Act that exempts the payment of this
compensation if water is reallocated to “(i) provide for the Reserve; (ii) rectify an overallocation of water use from the resource in question; or (iii) rectifL an unfair or
disproportionate water use (italics added)” (National Water Act, Section 22 (7)). It is vital,
therefore, that this safeguard he implemented effectively.
The above-mentioned elements of the Act potentially foster the transformation of South African
society towards greater equity. However, the drawbacks of the Act are that it (1) retains, unaltered,
‘‘Mama de Lange (2001) describes the process of formulation of the Water Act, saying that, “Initially, the Minister
was opposed to any form of compensation for reduced or lost water allocations. However, in meetings with the Minister
and through the press, the agricultural sector pointed out that this would be unconstitutional, a position that was
confirmed by constitutional lawyers advising the Minister.”
the status quo of the apartheid era in two fundamental ways, and ( 2 ) introduces legal tools that
risk marginalizing small-scale water users even further. These drawbacks are as follows.
1. Existing Lawful Use: The National Water Act recognizes all existing water use in the two
years preceding the promulgation of the Act as lawful and, hence, also accepts the
inequities prevailing at that time. Moreover, the acceptance of “existing lawful use” as
the starting point of institutionalizing formal water rights favors those who had written
documents, such as permits recognized under apartheid law in the white areas. These
provide much stronger proof of lawful water use in the past when compared with what
the inhabitants of the former Homelands can marshal as evidence of their prior use of
water. At hest, the latter can refer to notions of established use embedded in what were
typically verbal contracts or communal water tenure arrangements.
2. Composition of the Civil Service: Nationwide, there were no forced retrenchments in the
government administrative services in the new dispensation. This resulted in the new
approach to water resources management being implemented by many of the officials
responsible for executing the previous, inequitable legislation.
3. Basic Human Income Needs: Water for productive purposes, which help income-poor
women and men to improve the harvests of their homestead gardens or fields, or use water
for their poultry and livestock enterprises or cottage industries, is not covered explicitly
in the National Water Reserve. Even Schedule One, which specifies uses of small quantities
of water that are permissible under any condition-without need for registration,
authorization, or payment, also in (sub-) basins that are declared as being “waterstressed”-isnot clear on whether the use of water is permitted for producing goods that
will be sold for a minimal income is permitted. “Schedule One Water Uses” deal only
with water used for reasonable domestic use, livestock other than feedlots, and “small
gardening not for commercial purposes.” However, at least a part of the harvest obtained
by poor farmers from their farms and gardens is market-oriented, a proportion that is only
expected to grow in the future. As the numbers of those who already have or who hope
to obtain the requisite infrastructure in order to irrigate small portions of their homesteads
or use water for other productive purposes increase, the competition with the few highvolume users present in the same (sub-) basin is likely to intensify. The protection of the
water rights of the former group-which an amended National Water Reserve would
assure-rather than merely the grant of permission to use small amounts of water without
any guarantee, which an amended Schedule One would give, will probably make a
difference to the security of rural livelihoods.
However, the practical implementation of any protection or authorization of low-volume
productive use requires different tools than those available now. Tracing millions of low-volume
water users for formal registration and authorization through licensing would he a logistical
nightmare. The formal registration of water use, which is currently underway, for example, excludes
irrigated farms below two hectares. Legal tools, such as (compulsory) licensing are effective and
indispensable to vest rights in and to regulate a small number of high-volume users. But they are
inappropriate for even assessing the quantum of current water use by a large number of smallscale users let alone for providing ( I ) any of the benefits of (tradable) licenses to them, or (2)
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over scarce water resources. Similarly, disempowerment also occurs when formal entitlements to
water are a precondition for membership of, for example, former Irrigation Boards and current
Water Users Associations. Other forms of entitlement should ensure that the formal rights of poor,
small-volume water users-versus high-volume users-become stronger than what they were under
apartheid. In any case, whenever decisions about the interpretation of the text of the National
Water Act are made, the communication of this decision to the rural poor is essential. Currently,
few, if any, of them are even aware of the possible implications of the National Water Act for
strengthening their rights to water for productive uses.
To conclude, the compromises struck between changing and maintaining inequities in South
African society undoubtedly contributed to what is probably the most remarkable achievement of
the formulation of the National Water Act, which is that most of the highly diverse stakeholders in
this "Rainbow Nation" not only endorsed the law but also take pride in this unique piece of legislation.
4. Establishment of Catchment Management Agencies
CMAs in the National Water Act
The interactions between the old and new formal legal systems in South Africa are apparent in
the establishment of Catchment Management Agencies (CMAs). In compliance with the National
Water Act, the Minister of Water Affairs and Forestry has started the process of establishing CMAs
in the nineteen Water Management Areas (or WMAs) of South Africa (figure 3). Gradually, he
will assign considerable water resource management powers that are currently held by DWAF to
these new governance structures. Each CMA is supposed to compile a Catchment Management
Figure 3. The nineteen Wafer Management Areas (WMAs) in South Africa.
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Strategy (CMS) relevant for the WMA under its jurisdiction and, ultimately, to c m y out functions
such as water resources planning in the catchment, registration, water charge collection, water
authorization, and licensing (including compulsory licensing). CMAs are to become self-financing.
Public participation in the process of establishing CMAs and fair representation of all stakeholders
in the future Governing Board and activities of the CMAs are legally required. In the Governing
Board, the interests of local and provincial government, current and potential water users, and
environmental interest groups are to be represented. One of the five initial tasks of a CMA is "to
promote the co-ordination of its implementation with the implementation of any applicable
development plan established in terms of the Water Services Act (1997)" (RSA 1998a).
This change from a centralized management approach based on command and control from
the nation's capital to a decentralized participatory model based on cooperative governance and
coordination through CMAs is extremely significant (Muller 2001). Parallel to the process of
establishing CMAs in the Water Management Areas, DWAF itself is being restructured. The
remaining national functions of DWAF are being defined, and preparations for reorganizing DWAF
regional offices into technical support structures of the CMA in the new Water Management Areas
have begun. As long as CMAs are still being established and are maturing, DWAF will continue
to carry out all functions not yet taken up by the CMAs themselves.
The focus of the rest of this paper is on the formal establishment process of the CMA in the
highly water-stressed Olifants Basin, the nation's second pilot basin for this process." The Olifants
River has its source in Gauteng province and passes through Mpumalanga and Limpopo provinces
into the Kmger National Park, before entering Mozambique where it joins the Limpopo River
(figures 4 and 5). More than three million people, the majority of whom are poor, live in this
water-stressed basin. Further, many of these poor live in the congested former Homelands of
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Figure 5. Location of the Olifanrs River Basin in South Africa.
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The DWAF Regional Office in Mpumalanga drives the process of CMA establishment in the
Olifants Basin (Ligthelm 2001). This process is especially informative because, in the course of
it, two highly contrasting approaches were devised and implemented. These approaches illustrate
how various actors seek to use the design stage of this new institution as an arena in which to
either change or further entrench the inequitable conditions of the past.
Formulation of a Technical Proposal for CMA Establishment
The leading approach in establishing the CMA in the Olifants Basin highlights how those who
dominated water control during the apartheid era continued to exercise power afterwards. Although
historically disadvantaged individuals were included in the decision-making process during the
establishment of the CMA, theirs was merely a token presence. Furthermore, the participation of
blacks in the functioning of the future CMA was envisaged as being even more limited than in
the run-up to the CMA's establishment, notwithstanding the fact that the inclusion of historically
disadvantaged water users in the process was emphasized by DWAF from the very beginning.
For this reason, DWAF rebuffed a proposal by large-scale users to reinforce the control they had
enjoyed during apartheid.This happened when the Olifants River Forum-comprising the whitedominated mines, industry, the public sector electricity supply company, and eco-tourism
throughout the Olifants River Basin-proposed that they themselves would constitute the CMA
and then take the process ahead. This suggestion was made as soon as the new governance
structures of CMAs were adopted in the deliberations over the National Water Act. However,
DWAF, rejected this suggestion.
DWAF launched the process of establishing a CMA in the Olifants Basin in mid-1999 by
appointing technical consultants who had accumulated technical knowledge about this basin during
the previous decade. These consultants had also begun quantifying the Ecological Reserve for
this basin. As stipulated in their terms of reference, the main purpose is to submit a formal proposal
for a CMA to the Minister and to assist DWAF in establishing representative catchment
management structures. Two rounds of public meetings were held in five places in the basin, in
order to inform and consult people who would be affected. Approximately 700 people participated
in each round. Invitations for these public meetings were sent not only to all contacts of DWAF
and the consultants in question, but also to local governments, tribal authorities, traditional healers,
etc. Although new contacts between DWAF and rural communities were established in this way,
the procedure adopted was unsystematic. Local governments, which were still in their infancy at
the start of the process, had no specific role. Furthermore, this oversight of local government
officials was to continue in later phases even though they had become much better consolidated
by then.
The first round of public meetings consisted primarily of information provision about the
concepts of basin-level management through CMAs and public participation. After the first round
of open consultations, DWAF and the consultants decided to add a second round in order to
publicize the ideas that they had developed for the future structures of the CMA. In all public
meetings, the m i i i language was English with translators only providing summarized translations
in local languages on request. By mid-2000, an incomplete draft proposal was finalized. The
consultants were the main authors of this proposal, which was made up largely of technical
information and water use projections that were essentially available even before the process of
establishing CMAs had begun.
The black participants were certainly interested in establishing contacts with DWAF, often
for the first time in history. However, they were also quite critical of the consultants and DWAF,
especially with regard to the agenda of the meetings and the way in which their representation
was treated. With regard to the agenda, they were particularly dissatisfied about the way in which
the issue of drinking water supply was handled. Invariably, participants raised their pressing
problems about the lack of adequate and/or clean drinking water during the meetings. However,
DWAF officials as well as the consultants referred people to other divisions within DWAF,
explaining that the CMA was one of the many parallel processes in which DWAF interacts with
the public and, therefore, tries to avoid an inter-departmental duplication of tasks. Other problems
included: frustration regarding English being the main language used in all meetings; suspicion
about the dominance, once again, of white consultants as perceived process drivers and as the
ones earning high salaries from a process that was seen as being very expensive; negative feelings
after the consultants’ explanation of the Ecological Reserve (“as if they find fish more important
than our lives”); and complaints about a lack of time for proper preparation and discussion and
inadequate explanations of what the issues really are. These were all drawbacks of the process
according to the black participants.
The issue of representation also generated strong negative sentiments. A so-called Stakeholder
Reference Group (SRG) was established to discuss the CMA proposal more in-depth. Originally,
the SRG consisted of (white) user groups that were already in contact with the consultants and
DWAF. They usually belonged to existing networks and reported hack to those they represented.
However, black participants for this SRG were invited in an ad hoc manner during the first round
of public consultations. A restricted number of volunteers that could participate without being
required to represent a constituency or report back to it was invited. Many black participants
regretted that there was no opportunity to interact with a constituency and thus ensure that their
inputs were mandated. Instead of being able to give authorized views, they could only contribute
their personal perspectives.
It was especially regretted that local government officials had not been officially invited to
the public and Stakeholder Reference Group meetings, even when chiefs and their representatives
were invited. Statements were made to the effect that some uninvited local government officials
had threatened their traditional counterparts that they would make every attempt to derail any
process of village-level development that did not have their explicit sanction or had not required
their active participation or decision-making input. It is odd that local government had been
excluded from the Stakeholder Reference Group when it is the sole representative body at the
lowest level of the state’s governance structure and a logical channel for the implementation of
any development process.
After a long delay, in February 2002, a final meeting with the Stakeholder Reference Group
was held hefore formally submitting the CMA proposal, which was not much different than the
earlier draft. However, even at this meeting, the participation of black stakeholders was little more
than nominal. Problems from the previous meetings had not been properly addressed and were
repeated as a result. And once more, the wishes of many poor stakeholders for a more integrated
approach to water management by the CMA-one that considered both the consumptive and
productive uses of water in their communities-were peremptorily disregarded.
Ironically, albeit for different reasons, the process also ended up disappointing the selforganized high-volume water users and others who had worked closely with DWAF before 1994.
Their hope that a reliance on formerly collected technical expertise and the emergence of a new
public space for catchment management would easily enable them to continue exerting a de facto
voice in water management is at least partly vanishing. This trend is true of both the Olifants
Basin and the adjacent Inkomati Basin, which was the first pilot project where a similar approach
of formulating a proposal through technical consultants had been adopted. In the Inkornati, for
example, an active proponent of the National Water Act and strong defender of the interests of
large-scale farmers acknowledged that the public (read “white”) participation that was expected
through CMAs was a major reason to endorse the Act upon its formulation. However, later she
felt that the expectations raised had been in vain (Pieter Waalewijn, personal communication, 2001).
Bottom-Up Institution Building f o r River Basin Management
Early on in the first approach of CMA establishment discussed above, the DWAF Regional Office
quite rightly identified the problem that small-scale irrigators risked being overlooked. Whereas
large-scale farmers were well organized and represented in the CMA process, the many smallscale imgators were typically unorganized and had no avenue through which to voice their interests
and concerns. Therefore, just after the first round of public meetings, a parallel process of
consultations was initiated throughout the Olifants Basin, which aimed at a bottom-up
reconnaissance of small-scale water users’ needs and their suggestions for ways to ensure their
effective voice, for example, through Small-Scale Water Users Forums. The lead implementer of
the process was a (black) community development activist. Her network of contacts throughout
the hasin originated from her rural development activities during and after the anti-apartheid
struggle. This network included most local governments and also various NGOs, which facilitated
the logistics of the meetings.
Nine daylong workshops were held in the local language of the region with a total of 365
participants in attendance. These workshops generated overviews of the problems participants
experienced with regard to water, including drinking water-which was often most urgent-but
also rainfed and irrigated agriculture, and disputes with large-scale users about water allocation.
The debates also encompassed issues indirectly related to productive water use, such as the lack
of markets, inputs and training for both irrigated and rainfed agriculture, and frustrations about
the slow pace of land reform. The participants made concrete suggestions for the organization of
multi-tiered Small-Scale Water Users Forums for effective representation in the future CMA
Governing Board and Committees. These new CMA structures were also meant to enable technical
support and exchanges on water issues and to address development issues that were less directly
related to water. The report on these workshops (Kliumbane, de Lange and Sibuyi, forthcoming)
will be included as an appendix in the final technical proposal compiled by the consultants
mentioned above. Aftcr submitting the report, the community development activist continued
working on water-related and other issues in poor communities.
In sum, the approach taken by the development activist is essentially bottom-up institution
building for pro-poor river basin management. Besides continuity, an intrinsic feature of this
approach is collaboration with local government, NGOs, community-based organizations, other
development initiatives and with traditional chiefs. Poor people, especially women, are mobilized
to innovate in tapping more water sources and using water more productively, for example, through
water harvesting for homestead gardening and tree cultivation for food security. Mediation between
large-scale water users and poor communities quarrelling over shared water sources is another
important component. The development activist intercedes in disputes between communities, mines
and DWAF to solve problems such as excessive groundwater abstraction by mines, which dries
up boreholcs for domestic water supply in neighboring communities. Wherever high-volume water
users already recognize the need to improve social justice in their localities, she harnesses their
willingness into an encompassing process of dialogue between the non-poor and poor for better
sharing of water, water-related benefits as well as other benefits. Thus, white control over water
and other resources, established during the apartheid era, is gradually being transformed into a
more equitable sharing of benefits and decision-making, which incorporates the views of the black
rural poor.
5. Conclusions: Redressing Inequities in the Future
The early initiatives to establish the CMA of the Olifants River Basin highlight, in a nutshell,
very divergent interpretations of the broad legal framework set out by the National Water Act, in
general, and this important new water management institution, in particular. Initially, DWAF steered
the establishment process so as to ensure, that the historically disadvantaged groups would be
included from the start. In doing so, it countered the ambitions of white self-organized water users
who wanted to themselves take the lead in the process. Even so, in the subsequent process,
considerable differences emerged in the way DWAF and its appointed consultants formulated the
proposed CMA, on the one hand, and the manner in which members of rural black communities
elicited and proposed suggestions to the CMA's design, on the other. The latter raised the issues
that need to be part and parcel of the design of CMAs as well as other policies and institutions, if
the overarching aims of water management in South Africa are to be achieved. These include the
following:
I . Domestic Water Use in the Mandate of CMAs
The decision to promulgate the Water Services Act before the National Water Act risks leading to
an exacerbated and artificial separation of water used for domestic and productive purposes. In
this separation, it is presumed that water resources could be managed by ignoring domestic uses
of the same water source. Poor water users in both rural and urban areas are supposed to conceive
of and discuss their genuine needs for water for productive purposes while ignoring their still
unmer needs for domestic water. It is also assumed that the local government, supported by specific
departments in DWAF, is solely responsible for meeting domestic water needs of the poor. CMAs,
Water User Associations and all other institutions concerned with “Water Resource Management”
can, therefore, safely ignore these needs.
This separation may be justified in better-off areas, where domcstic water supply is well catered
for. However, such a disjunction would risk alienating all those South Africans whose domestic
water needs are still largely unmet from mainstream water management. Moreover, it would be
an abrogation of the basic principle of cooperative governance. DWAF’s Regional Office in KwaZulu Natal found a way out of this dilemma. There, DWAF staff from various departments took
the initiative to align their services on the ground into an integrated “one-window” service, in
which integrated water use and management in the communities themselves was taken as a starting
point. Incentives were created for staff within departments to cooperate in service delivery.
At the national level too possibilities for synergy in meeting both domestic and productive
water needs-for example, in the design of drinking water facilities infrastructure-are increasingly
being explored. Such initiatives need constant reinforcement.
2. Productive Water Use by the Poor Promoted through CMAs
CMAs will better convince historically disadvantaged water users that “there is something in it”
for them if CMAs help them to increase their incomes, besides improving their health and liberating
them from drudgery of fetching water from distant sources. This implies that CMAs are to stimulate
access to affordable water infrastructure for productive water use in cropping, livestock,
community-based forestry, fisheries, and so on. In the former white Republic of South Africa
(RSA), the department-then the DWA-provided huge subsidies for massive dam development
and large-scale irrigation infrastructure. To some extent, DWAF continues to do so for mines.
industries and, to a lesser extent, for large-scale farming. The extension of similar benefits to those
who failed to benefit in the past seems equally justified and should be a major consideration in
Catchment Management Strategies. In new programs for pro-poor water development, recent
insights are to be incorporated, for example, with regard to the importancc of building upon existing
communal tenure, promoting, where feasible, decentralized infrastructure such as village dams,
treadle pumps, and other appropriate technologies; ensuring community ownership of new
infrastructure and providing the required institutional capacity building; and guaranteeing access
to agricultural inputs, markets, credit and entrepreneurial training. Financial and other support
can be channeled via the CMA Governing Boards and related bodies of the CMA to local
government, NGOs, newly established Water Users Associations in poor communities, and other
grassroots organizations. Mutual learning and exchange among the historically disadvantaged
communities can be stimulated through the CMA as well.
3. Poor People’s Water Rights Protected
Poor people tend to lose out if they have to compete with the privileged large-scale water users,
such as mines that over-abstract groundwater used by poor communities, or large-scale farmers
who claim their former lawful use vis-i-vis the poor who want to use the same water source for
cattle, homestead gardening and even for domestic purposes. These conflicts emerged during CMA
establishment and will, in all likelihood, influence its future functioning. With the currently
envisaged devolution of powers to the CMA, such issues will fall under the jurisdiction of the
CMAs themselves. As unregistered Schedule One users, the poor will have no legal backing.
Therefore, effective methods and skill development are needed to resolve conflicts between largescale and small-scale water users. Legal tools to support equitable water allocation will also be
indispensable. A better understanding of local notions of registration of use, legitimacy of use,
allocation principles, dispute resolution mechanisms. and communities’ collective rights vis-a-vis
outsiders according to local law would inform policy makers about how to specify new regulations
that effectively empower poor people. Moreover, more insights into communal water tenure could
also help to solve intra-community conflicts over water, a field in which the National Water Act
is as yet unable to provide any support.
4. Cooperative Governance with Local Government
The first CMAs are expected to be established soon. The National Water Act requires a
demographically representative composition of the Governing Board and the Minister has farreaching powers to ensure such a composition. However, even if the composition of the new CMA
is equitable, what is less clear and more contentious is the issue of how the CMA will deal with
the fact that only a limited group of water users in the Water Management Area was reached in
the process of actually establishing the CMA itself. This is because the process of public
participation is still largely incomplete. In general, there are two options.
One option is that the CMA basically continues with the “public” that happens to be on board
at this stage, especially in the Stakeholder Reference Group (SRG). Activities such as the
formulation of the Catchment Management Strategy that warrant public participation would
primarily be discussed with this group. However, the ad hoc nature of this group, the lack of
representativeness and, especially, the oversight of local government render the SRG hardly
credible as a representative body for the historically disadvantaged.
At the same time, the well-organized water users in the SRG have a much stronger mandate
from their constituencies. Moreover, they enjoy longer-term contacts with DWAF, are better
informed, are comfortable speaking English, can read the CMA documents, are mobile, and have
access to lawyers if there are conflicts. Therefore, the presence of blacks in the SRG seriously
risks remaining nominal, merely providing a rubber stamp to the claim that inequities of the past
are being redressed in the process of CMA establishment. Hence, another option needs to be
developed.
The alternative-one that is much more appropriate-is that a new CMA should start a welldesigned process to institutionalize public participation according to the subsidiarity principle, as
one of its major tasks to ensure that those who were marginalized in the past are now the most
empowered. Ultimately, the CMA would coordinate water management planning and
implementation with the local government at local, district, provincial and national levels. The
Catchment Management Strategy would basically be an aggregate of the integrated water
and priorities should be modified to account for priority areas identified for the recently launched
lntegrated Rural Development Program in those areas in the former Homelands where it is being
implemented. Active participation by grassroots civic society is also to be promoted. The
performance of CMAs would be monitored in the light of this long-term perspective.
Considerable support by DWAF will be needed to build the capacities of local government,
other organizations, and (potential) large-scale and small-scale water users to engage effectively
in local-level needs assessment, plan development and transparent, accountable implementation.
lnformation provision to local government should be the very first step of any such strategyincluding that of the National Water Resource Strategy, which defines the national framework
within which all lower-level institutions have to function. Current water resource planning tools
need to become much more user-friendly, more interactive and cheaper. Ultimately, even illiterate
small-scale water users would need to see their realities reflected and negotiable in the decisionsupport tools and models.
If the National Water Act is interpreted in this sense. those who were marginalized in the
past will increasingly be empowered by using more water more productively for multiple purposes.
They will also be able to negotiate a better share in water and water-related benefits in a new
dialogue with the large-scale users who less than one decade ago held virtually exclusive control
over water resources in South Africa.
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