The anxiety and controversy have intensified over the past few weeks as the dire state of Johannesburg’s water security and service delivery has become more visible. As in most of South Africa, Johannesburgers have experienced a dramatic increase in water shortages and power outages in the city’s poorer areas over the past few weeks, making the headlines with rare ferocity.
Although water and sanitation service delivery is a local government function in South Africa, it will likely be – like electricity supply – much more prominent in voters’ minds in the upcoming May 2024 national and provincial elections. Voter frustrations about the state of these services recently have boiled over in numerous locations, and may well influence how people vote at national and provincial level.
The anxiety and controversy have intensified over the past few weeks as the dire state of Johannesburg’s water security and service delivery has become more visible. As in most of South Africa, Johannesburgers have experienced a dramatic increase in water shortages and power outages in the city’s poorer areas over the past few weeks, making the headlines with rare ferocity. In January, for example, Johannesburg Water acknowledged that it was unable to replace an emergency valve and meter in the Sandton area, a primary wealthy area, and also home to major financial and other business institutions.
Come March, and the mayor’s spokesperson conceded that many parts of the city were affected by a water systems breakdown, but insisted that there was no crisis, since Johannesburg Water supposedly monitors the “water supply system continuously” and “warns residents when demand peaks drastically”. But this proved to be very patchy.
Neighbouring Tshwane and Ekurhuleni are experiencing similar challenges, and for some time already, Mangaung/Bloemfontein, Nelson Mandela Bay / Port Elizabeth, eThekwini/Durban, Buffalo City have had several interventions from national departments like the National Treasury, Department of Water and Sanitation (DWS) and the Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs (CoGTA) ministry. With the exception of Cape Town, which, of course, had its own water crisis at the turn of the decade, all the metros are currently grappling with severe interruptions and shortages of water supply, and contamination.
At national level the DWS’s 2013 Blue and Green Drop reports showed that the declining quality and escalating losses of South Africa’s urban water and sanitation infrastructure have increased in six of the other seven metros and in half of other municipalities nationwide. The challenges vary from location to location, which means that there is no single prescription for fixing the problems and how to ensure adequate and reliable water supply over time.
International experience, though, indicates that clearer separation between regulatory oversight, executive and operational roles, together with employing suitably skilled professionals, offer better prospects for managing water sustainably. Somehow, however, there remains resistance in South Africa to the corporatisation of water service providers – whether public or private – the water sector professionals therefore remain exposed to political interference.
There have been cases where at least some South African cities have introduced such role definitions and separation. Mbombela even contracted a private company to manage part of the water business, but elsewhere local service providers have remained exposed to random political intervention. Johannesburg has been the only metro that set up a firm, legally defined facility, Johannesburg Water, in the early 2000s as a council owned company, protected by a firm legal definition outside the normal municipal structure. This mandated it not only to perform its professional service provider role without political interference, but also to contract an external team of international and local experts more readily to support it in building longer-term capacity.
The arrangement for the team of additional advisors was, however, not extended much beyond the original contract, which meant that the initiative was never able to move through to make a sustained impact. Yet the corporatisation of Johannesburg Water in the early 2000s did sustain a pretty sound service delivery model for some time, with no or limited political interference. But it was never allowed to become a fully ringfenced contractor over time. For years, though, eThekwini Water showed that functioning without routine political interference from the council, a department could emulate the utility model fairly well. But over recent years, political interference in the water unit’s operations increased, and the subsequent decline in effective, innovative customer-focused service delivery seems to confirm the merits of letting the politicians govern and technical management perform professional services.
It is as yet unclear how South Africans will respond to the water crisis at the polls. And it may well be that city councils will seek to retain the current model where the water units are part and parcel of the municipality. DWS has correctly pointed out that unless inefficiencies are fixed – such as reducing the high physical and commercial losses of water and improving delivery processes, better targeting of investment choices, and achieving higher value for money in procurement and contract management – the sector will remain fraught.
Financial incentives can be used to incentivise improvements to governance and management, while also addressing the basic underlying problem that water services are not managed as a business, but as technical departments inside municipalities. This has reduced their strategic accountability. Theoretically, this is vested in the municipal manager rather than a professional water utility executive – hence there have been new calls for dedicated, term-contracted results-based public or private water service providers with clearly accountable management.
But will voters in the national and provincial elections make the necessary connections to care enough about such questions? And if they do, will the politicians hear their voices?
Chris Heymans is an independent advisor, specialising in the political economy of cities, urban development and infrastructure management, especially water and sanitation.
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