The South Africa Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) stands firm on its view that the country’s water crisis needs to be declared a national disaster.

This is despite the publication last month of the National Water Plan, developed by the Presidency-led National Water Crisis Committee (Watercom), which promised to tackle the long-standing water challenges.

SAHRC Commissioner Dr Henk Boshoff said that given the scale, scope and magnitude of the water crisis, the commission is calling for the water crisis to be declared a national disaster in accordance with the Disaster Management Act 57 of 2002.

Speaking during a SAHRC-hosted webinar on the water crisis, he explained the water crisis requires an urgent, broad, integrated and coordinated effort, and the declaration of a state of national disaster will enable the mobilisation of emergency funds, better intergovernmental collaboration and deliver a coordinated process.

Water-related complaints continue to rank in the top five complaints received by the SAHRC.

This, alongside the commission’s six provincial inquiries related to water since 2021 across KwaZulu-Natal, Limpopo, Mpumalanga, Free State, Northern Cape and Gauteng, and the South African Water Rights Tracker, a project partnership between the SAHRC and the University of the Witwatersrand, reveal the scale of the crisis.

Through the inquiries and the Water Rights Tracker, the SAHRC has identified several drivers that inhibit the ability of water services authorities to effectively deliver water.

These include aging infrastructure; an inadequate funding model; high levels of indebted to water boards, at R28-billion; skills deficit and lack of capacity in technical departments; the discharge of untreated effluent into water resources and high levels of water losses; water sabotage, theft of infrastructure and emergence of water mafias; and a water tankering system fraught with corruption.

Boshoff said the water crisis is widespread and causing a significant disruption in the lives of communities.

“We are aware that the National Water Action Plan was recently released. We agree that the symptoms have been identified. We agree that there is a proper diagnosis of the problem,” he said, questioning, however, if the action plan adequately deals with the challenges going forward.

The SAHRC is of the view that declaring a national state of disaster will, among others, ensure greater and enhanced governmental collaboration, budget prioritisation and emergency and speedier procurement.

“Government simply does not have sufficient funds at this stage to address the water crisis, and it will be a process that will be unfolding over quite a few years,” Boshoff continued, noting that time will tell whether the national water plan is sufficient to address the water crisis.

Unpacking the National Action Plan during the seminar, Department of Water and Sanitation director general Dr Sean Phillips said that a state of disaster will not achieve much more than what is already being undertaken to ensure water security.

He agreed that urgent action is needed to address immediate crises, however, reforming the sector for long-term sustainability is also required.

The declaration of a national state of disaster will not address the core causes of the challenges, and would not result in a sustainable sector.

“I can understand the reasoning for it, but I am still not convinced that it would result in much more than is currently the case. [Emergency procurement, for example] might, in the short term, result in some [elements] being addressed more quickly. But unless you address the root causes, the problems are going to keep coming back,” Phillips noted.

The National Water Action Plan contains the elements required to address the real root causes, which the disaster provisions could not do.

Further, he said it would not result in much more money being allocated.

“It is a zero-sum game. If you are going to take the money, where do we take it from? Do we take it from the provincial health and education budgets, or do we take it from the already very scanty defence budget? That is the problem that we face.”

The water sector needs to be financially self-sustaining.

The backlog of water and sanitation infrastructure at municipal level, excluding the metropolitan municipalities, is at least R400-billion. The grants provided from national governments to municipalities each year for water sanitation is about R25-billion.

With the lack of maintenance by municipalities, that backlog is increasing.

“The reason why we have the difficulties that we have at municipal level, is because of the high level of non-revenue water and because revenue being diverted to other functions.

“If you do not do maintenance of water and sanitation infrastructure timely, it deteriorates rapidly, and it costs much more to fix it . . . than it would have cost to maintain it.”

To resolve this challenge, nonrevenue water needs to be reduced, revenue collection needs to be improved, revenue from the sale of water needs to be ring-fence and infrastructure needs to be better maintained.

“That will save a lot of huge expenditure in the future.”

The Watercom will deliver the National Action Plan, coordinate, ensure urgency in implementation and reinforce existing initiatives.