There’s an animated movie called Rango. A trifling film that captures the life of a chameleon, Rango, who has to follow the aridness and mirage of a desert to find water in a persevering and gun-slinging town called Dirt.
In this vast, hot desert he arrives to thirsty, wretched and desperate locals who have not had water in a long time. They live with the hope it will come back any day, but little do they know that John, a mayor-tortoise has colluded with his friends to shut the town off from the supply. In one of the dialogues with Rango, the cunning tortoise said something so haunting, poignant and yet accurate: “Water, Mr Rango, water. Without it, there’s nothing but dust and decay. But with water, there’s life ... That’s the immutable law of the desert. You control water, and you control everything.”
Though a quote from an eerie film, its truth has implications for most people in South Africa. Before the declaration of the National Water Act (NWA) 36 of 1998, which recognised that a post-apartheid jurisprudence on the management of the natural resource is a necessity and an issue of justice, there were riparian rights (a system of de facto ownership of surface and underground water on a piece of land).
By virtue of owning land, the few advantaged also enjoyed access to water. Though eradicated on paper, the functions of this old law have not been reversed. It’s no secret that the dispossession of land through instruments such as the Native Land Act of 1913 also came with ownership of many other critical assets. The government is nowhere near restoring land to its rightful owners, therefore, nowhere near controlling water.
Section 3 (1) of the NWA states that as the public trustee of the nation’s water resources, the national government, through the minister of water, must ensure it is managed in a sustainable and equitable manner for the benefit of all. Importantly, that water cannot be owned or hoarded.
For a gateway economy with an ever-growing demand for water, we don’t have enough rainfall and the little supply the country has is torn between irrigation, mining and other major industries. This unfortunately kicks an everyday South African out to the curb. The minister of water and sanitation, Senzo Mchunu, has denied that South Africa has a water crisis. But when does a crisis become a crisis?
There is broad consensus that land redistribution and restitution has not progressed at the rate originally envisaged.
— The presidential panel report on land reform and agriculture
Hlomane Chauke, ANC’s former chairperson of parliament’s portfolio committee on water and sanitation demanded, during Cape Town's day zero crisis in 2018: “We want to know who is this one that has so much water and the remaining 3,000 dams. Who is in control of those dams? We have a drought crisis here, but some dams are privately owned.” He claimed, according to thesouthafrican.com, that out of the 4,000 water resources in South Africa, the government controls 350. Yeah, we also want to know!
If this is the case, how can the government, in all earnest, manage and distribute what they don’t control? While they figure this out, the deprivation has real and pressing consequences for the people of QwaQwa, Polokwane, Hammanskraal, Moutse, Giyani, Port Shepstone, Alexandra and KwaMhlanga (to name a few). Mchunu’s rebuttal is antithetical to the lived experiences of the people, a severe injustice.
I digress. Land reform remains a matter of composites, not because of poor policy design or laws, but poor implementation. The presidential panel report on land reform and agriculture concurred: “There is broad consensus that land redistribution and restitution has not progressed at the rate originally envisaged.” The same can be said about water reforms.
Where water is still under historic ownership, the government has a right to review its use. Through the NWA it has the legal power to convert existing entitlements into compulsory licensing which ensures water is shared fairly. But this process has only been started in three instances, Mhlathuze in KwaZulu-Natal, Jan Dissel in Western Cape and Tosca in North West.
A tragic scenario is playing out in some Limpopo villages such as Dikgalaopeng, Letebejane and Phetwana, which share the aesthetic landscape with the Flag Boshielo Dam — formerly Arabie — but their taps run dry. This dam was established in 1987 for irrigation, municipal supply and mining purposes. A similar storyline plays out in Moutse, where communities such as Ntwane and Thabakhubedu have the Loskop Dam in their backyard, but they struggle for access to water on a daily basis. Loskop was established mainly for irrigation in the 1930s.
Both dams are government-owned, and they are not providing relief for the people around them. At whose door do we lay the blame when in areas where it does have full control, the government still fails to reticulate where it’s needed most?
Irrigation takes up most of the water in the pool, and rightfully so, food security is equally a matter of survival. The department of water and sanitation recently announced it plans to amend the Water Services Act, whose mandate is to ensure that the right to access to basic water is realised. But until implemented, this is just talk.
We are no different from the little animals of Dirt. Every week they stood in line and prayed that their taps will have water and it never came. Our so-called leaders have no idea who’s in charge of some of the available water, and quite frankly they are too afraid to do something about it. Worse, what they own they fail dismally to equitably distribute.
South Africa is a land of prescriptions, white papers, policies and laws that are judicious, but the lack of interest in implementing them continues to compromise the vast majority. But what good are bills and acts if the real control of resources is still being meekly negotiated? Just because something is not accessible does not mean it is unavailable.
Undoubtedly, without water, we have nothing but dust and decay.
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