Improve Water Management; Don't Make New Laws

Implementing existing laws could have averted South Africa’s water crisis, yet the minister of water affairs has failed to do this, according to Mike Muller, visiting adjunct professor at the University of the Witwatersrand.

"Because water is shared by everyone, there have to be rules to govern the way it is used. But it’s a difficult resource to manage, and when things go wrong, the temptation is to blame the unpredictability of water supply, or the rules.

In fact, the problem is usually neither the water nor the rules, but the people concerned.

When politicians in trouble say that the rules need to be changed, be wary. Experience around the world shows that, more often than not, water laws are not the problem; they are simply not implemented. So, a proposal by South Africa’s minister of water affairs, Nomvula Mokonyane, to revise the two laws that underpin South Africa’s water security is worrying. We need to ask whether the problems are with the laws or with her department’s administration of them.

The two laws are the 1998 National Water Act and the 1997 Water Services Act. The former sets out how South Africa should cope with the vagaries of the country’s climate and the demands of a growing population. It stipulates what the various tiers of government and water users should do and what procedures should be used to address particular problems.

The Water Services Act, on the other hand, regulates municipal water supply and sanitation services. So what happens when there is no longer enough water to go around or to meet new needs? The current laws set out technical and administrative processes that need to be followed to deal with such scenarios. These allow water to be reallocated between existing users and those seeking water for the first time.