Queenie Magubane, 38, of Khayelitsha township in Cape Town, South Africa, uses a bucket to collect the water that constantly leaks from her outdoor tap. It is one of thousands of faulty taps across South Africa. Credit: Melany Bendix/IPS

By Melany Bendix
CAPE TOWN, Feb 12 2014 (IPS)

The South African government’s earnest rush to provide water to millions of people post-apartheid may have jeopardised its attempts to provide services to the country in the long run.

South Africa is the 30^th driest country in the world, yet it is one of the fastest-growing water consumers. According to the National Treasury’s 2012 Budget Review, demand for the scarce resource is increasing so rapidly that it is set to outstrip supply as early as 2030.

But this nation is in a race against time to plug the holes in its leaky water supply system, which is allowing so much of the crucial resource to drip away that the country’s water security is now at risk.“Without water we cannot achieve our government’s priorities, such as infrastructure development and food security.” -- Rejoice Mabudafhasi, deputy minister of the DWEA

Jay Bhagwan, executive manager for water use and waste management  at the Water Research Commission (WRC), said that this water wastage was a natural result of the government having to quickly extend the water supply to a large majority of the country’s 51 million people post-democracy.

“After 1994 we had to give more than half the population access to water. This obviously put a lot of pressure on resources and capacity,” he told IPS.

“Maintenance just wasn’t a high priority and we are starting to see the consequences of that now.”

A 2013 WRC study revealed that South Africa is losing an average of 1.58 billion kilo-litres of water a year — the equivalent of 4.3 million swimming pools of water. The water wastage, attributed mostly to leaky pipes and theft, represents more than a third of all municipal water.

Shortage of Skilled Engineers

Kobus van Zyl, associate professor of hydraulic engineering at the University of Cape Town, whose speciality is water distribution systems, agreed that providing water to those who were denied this basic service under apartheid was a contributing factor to the current water woes.

But he argued that the mass exodus of engineers and project managers over the past 20 years was the key reason.

“The huge problem is that we’ve lost a lot of expertise, both on a local level in municipalities and at a national level within the Department of Water Affairs,” he told IPS.

“As a result there is a massive shortage of engineers and project managers, and you simply cannot manage a distribution system properly if you don’t have enough people with the necessary expertise to do so.”

Of the more than 230 municipalities in South Africa, 79 have no civil engineers or technicians and only 45 have civil engineers, according to a report by Allyson Lawless, a former president of the South African Institute of Civil Engineering.

To illustrate how extreme the situation is, Lawless’ report pointed out that there are more civil engineers serving the zoo infrastructure in Auckland, New Zealand, than in 86 percent of South Africa’s municipalities.

Water Loss Affects Development

Aside from costing the South African economy a hefty 642 million dollars a year, widespread water wastage jeopardises the country’s socio-economic development.

“Water is not just part of the economy, it is the lifeblood of our economy,” Christine Colvin, senior manager for the World Wide Fund for Nature’s freshwater programme in South Africa, told IPS.

“Expecting to maintain the economy and grow it without water is like expecting someone to carry on living after draining all the blood from their body.”

Rejoice Mabudafhasi, deputy minister of the Department of Water and Environmental Affairs (DWEA), agreed.

“Without water we cannot achieve our government’s priorities, such as infrastructure development and food security,” Mabudafhasi told IPS.

She added that water shortages would derail the government’s plans to deliver this basic service to hundreds of impoverished communities throughout South Africa, who still do not have access to clean, running water.

Van Zyl pointed out that South Africa’s poorest areas are likely to be hardest hit by water shortages.

“The drier parts of the country will be the first to experience shortages. These are commonly areas where the previous ‘homelands’ were established, which are still radically impoverished,” he said.

He added that “warning signs are now very clear in South Africa — demand will outstrip supply unless immediate action is taken.”

It seems South African President Jacob Zuma has taken heed of these warning signs by asking DWEA’s minister Edna Molewa to reduce water loss by 50 percent in 2014.

Her department has stepped up its War on Leaks project, which focuses on getting communities and municipalities to work together to report and fix leaks.

As to whether the DWEA’s efforts will ensure South Africa has enough water for the future, van Zyl said the initiatives are positive but more needed to be done in order to turn around the crisis.

“With what is currently being done, the best we can hope for is to plug a few holes. We need to do more because time’s running out.”

Cape Town water activist Nokuzola Bulana says water management devices are not the way to solve water waste and debt for the poor. Credit: Brendon Bosworth/IPS

By Brendon Bosworth
CAPE TOWN, South Africa, May 23 2013 (IPS)

Nokuzola Bulana has a problem with leaks. The water that drips from the pipes of the toilet outside her home in Khayelitsha, a large semi-informal township on the fringes of Cape Town, South Africa goes to waste and drives up her water bill.

Bulana, a water activist, says she fixed the leaks in January but water on the floor at the base of the toilet, which is inside a stall painted with pink, yellow and purple stripes, and pooled on the ground outside the stall, shows that seepages persist.

In March, her eight-person home used over seven times the amount of water the city of Cape Town gives indigent households for free in a month. Bulana blames the leaks for this.

“We don’t mind to pay for the water we drink or cook with but now the water goes down the drain,” Bulana tells IPS when interviewed at her home. “I love the environment. I want to look after the water.”

Bulana is one of many South Africans whose wasted water contributes to the country’s yearly loss of more than a third of its water – a shortfall driven chiefly by leaks, according to a 2012 report from the South African Water Research Commission. These losses cost municipalities more than 731 million dollars annually and drive poor citizens into debt they often cannot afford to pay.

South Africa is also the 30^th driest country in the world and could hit water shortages as early as 2025. It can scarcely afford to squander this resource.

Water saving devices denounced

At about 4 pm on a Saturday afternoon, there was no water coming from the tap outside 60-year-old Lusi Daniso’s house in Khayelitsha. This is a regular occurrence, Daniso tells IPS.

She claims she gets just 20 litres of water daily – not enough for the eight people living in her home – and has to ask her neighbours for water.

Daniso’s home is one of about 84,000 in Cape Town where the city has installed water management devices (WMDs). Housed in oval boxes with blue lids, the devices are set to provide indigent residents (those with a total monthly household income of 313 dollars or less, or a property value of 20,890 dollars or under) with 10.5 kilolitres of free water per month. This allotment is broken into a 350-litre daily allowance.

The devices cut water supply once the daily limit is reached, and turn it back on the next day.

The WMDs play a key role in the city’s water management strategy and are touted as a way to deal with the 9.2 million dollars indigent households owe the city. If indigent residents choose to have a device installed, the city repairs leaks, installs the device, and cancels their outstanding water debt.

But as IPS reported previously community leaders and civil society organisations have denounced the WMDs.

The devices are going into households with low quality plumbing infrastructure, Taryn Pereira, a researcher with the non-profit Environmental Monitoring Group, based in Cape Town, tells IPS. Leaks from taps, cisterns and underground pipes result in residents not getting their daily 350 litres, she says.

Technicians fix leaks when installing the devices but repairs often don’t last and residents in poor communities don’t have the money to pay for plumbers, says Pereira.

Pereira’s research indicates that residents are not properly consulted about the devices, cut-offs due to leaks and technical problems are common, and people struggle to get help from the city when meters malfunction.

“In this city, this supposedly world-class city, many of our fellow citizens, even once they manage to get a house that they’ve been waiting a long time for on a housing list, are actually, in terms of water, worse off then when they lived in shacks,” she says.

A fragile compromise

Because of the issues with water management devices, Bulana and other residents in Makhaza, a subsection of Khayelitsha, met with city officials last year and asked for a six-month pilot programme in the subsection whereby the city will fix leaks and freeze residents’ debt without installing the devices.

“We can manage our water because we are the ones using the water,” says Bulana.

Over the past months, the city has been assessing leaks and doing education and awareness in Makhaza in preparation for fixing leaks, councillor Ernest Sonnenberg, the city’s mayoral committee member for utility services, tells IPS in an emailed response.

But that does not mean devices are off the table.

The city will review all the houses affected by the project and analyse their water use, Sonnenberg says. “If residents are unable to decrease their usage as discussed in the meeting the city will review their individual account and install a WMD if necessary.”