
Picture: Canva
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The dire state of the water services of South Africa’s municipalities has been in the headlines for some time. But while the larger urban centres like Johannesburg, Nelson Mandela Bay, Tshwane and most other metros often make such headlines, the severity of the challenges in smaller towns does not quite get the same coverage. When they do, their stories somehow do not stay in the public discourse to the same extent that stories about the services decline in bigger urban centres do.
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The dire state of the water services of South Africa’s municipalities has been in the headlines for some time. But while the larger urban centres like Johannesburg, Nelson Mandela Bay, Tshwane and most other metros often make such headlines, the severity of the challenges in smaller towns does not quite get the same coverage. When they do, their stories somehow do not stay in the public discourse to the same extent that stories about the services decline in bigger urban centres do.
Over the past few weeks water services in Cradock in the Eastern Cape highlighted the plight of small towns when these services fail. It is reminiscent of a water sector adage that “the problem is not the pipes; it’s the institutions that manage the pipes.”
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Over the past few weeks water services in Cradock in the Eastern Cape highlighted the plight of small towns when these services fail. It is reminiscent of a water sector adage that “the problem is not the pipes; it’s the institutions that manage the pipes.”
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Let’s briefly recap on the Cradock water breakdown and controversy, and what this tells us about the state of small-town water in South Africa.
- Cradock falls within the Chris Hani district municipality in the Eastern Cape. In 2014, water services were placed under this municipality, on the assumption that the regional arrangement would accelerate access for previously excluded communities.
- However, like other towns in this district municipality, it has experienced regular (some say daily) water failures.
- In mid-November 2024 the municipality sent out debit notices to registered residents, demanding water service payments that in some cases added up to hundreds of thousands of rand, reflecting several months of non-payment. Many say that this was vindictive, based on flimsy data, and disregarding the municipality’s own water service management failures, also placing a question mark over the accuracy of water measurement.
- These issues date back considerably. In December 2022, writer Joseph Chirume summed it up rather pertinently in GroundUp magazine, depicting frustration among residents and owners that felt caught up in public sector tensions where national government “blames Chris Hani municipality” and “the municipality blames load-shedding”. At the time, ratepayers in Cradock expressed concern that new water tariff increases shortly after the Chris Hani district municipality took over the local water and sanitation functions were “unaffordable and untransparent”. They complained that water infrastructure was run down, calling for joint local and national government financial interventions to improve local infrastructure, rather than continuing with the district municipality as service provider.
- Residents requested to see the municipality’s formula for costing water and wanted to engage directly with a water engineer of the local municipality. They also referred to an earlier municipal undertaking to increase rates gradually and complained that the increases were not based on national approval, as National Treasury required.
- Many Cradock residents feel frustrated that they have no insight into how the municipality’s revenue would be used and distributed to secure services for all residents and other users. They expressed concern that their payments went to the district-level Chris Hani municipality rather than to Cradock specifically, which is closer to the points of service delivery.
Cradock ratepayers say that they often do not get responses to their concerns. Daily Maverick reported on 8 December 2024 that ratepayers complain that Chris Hani Municipality workers take “days or weeks” to fix leaks and often do not resolve problems effectively. They say that staff at the local Chris Hani municipal office often are not on duty or accessible and provide no feedback on whether and how it dealt with reported problems.
A ratepayer told me that tariffs to recoup were not as agreed in the initial setting of “acceptable” water tariffs in 2014, and that upon enquiry there were no records available of initial meter readings when Chris Hani Municipality became the water authority in 2014. Received invoices mostly show only a postal address. Erf numbers often do not correlate with properties, while some monthly meter readings are not reflected on the submitted invoice, nor do payments necessarily appear on statements.
Ratepayers are also concerned that there is no public participation in the drafting of yearly tariff increases, so that the process does not meet legal and constitutional requirements about access to water. Enquiries are often unresolved as offices are often closed and the system offline.
The Department of Water and Sanitation’s 2023 Blue Drop and Green Drop Reports and subsequent comments reiterated that the water problems in the region and in the municipality were deepened by poor planning and management and operational maintenance. These reports ascribed the district municipality’s shortcomings to “systemic” governance failure, inadequate skills, budget constraints, weak monitoring, unreliable data, and ultimately slow or no redress. The Green Drop Report rated wastewater management, especially in growing urban centres, as far below basic acceptable standards and national norms, which escalated environmental pollution and health risks.
The reports called for urgent interventions, especially in towns, first to improve infrastructure, but of equal importance for training and upskilling of operators, and for robust monitoring of environmental compliance and infrastructure renewal.
Stronger political and departmental leadership at the Department of Water and Sanitation (DWS) over the past three years has improved reform and sharpened diagnoses about the fragility of the sector in parts of the country. But the problem that the national DWS leadership inherited is at a scale hard to comprehend. Cradock (now Nxuba) has attracted considerable attention in recent weeks, but its problems mirror those of other towns in the larger Chris Hani municipality district and in several other parts of South Africa.
At the root of overcoming this is a need for institutional reform towards a system that holds service providers and their staff clearly accountable, and that incentivises good performance. A good starting point would be clearer ring-fencing of service providers as public or private companies or as municipal departments. This would provide a framework for holding institutions clearly accountable for maintaining, expanding and improving infrastructure and services.
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Institutional reform does not, however, mean that politicians or technical leadership solely determine the structure of and relationships between relevant institutions. The Cradock story highlights a need to hold the service provider accountable. This means enabling consumers/citizens to contribute in the governance process of the service providers. This requires, foremost, a well-functioning consumer accountability mechanism that is open regarding information to the public.
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Institutional reform does not, however, mean that politicians or technical leadership solely determine the structure of and relationships between relevant institutions. The Cradock story highlights a need to hold the service provider accountable. This means enabling consumers/citizens to contribute in the governance process of the service providers. This requires, foremost, a well-functioning consumer accountability mechanism that is open regarding information to the public. South Africa’s national Blue Drop and Green Drop Reports are good steps in this direction, because they offer accessible information about the macrosystem, but having at a local level information about a provider’s performance relative to others.
User-friendly annual reports and other accessible information on objectives, plans and priorities are all potentially useful, and also to enable the public to see and question service delivery-related information and actions. Information provision alone is a one-way process, though, and the Cradock case shows the need for having more open processes of consultation that actively seek citizens’/users’ opinions.
- Chris Heymans is an independent adviser specialising in the political economy of cities, urban development and water and sanitation service delivery.
Also read:
Cities and water: some lessons from very water-scarce places