Poor planning, a reluctance to deal with corruption, and a lack of foresight are some of the reasons the South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) has found to be behind KwaZulu-Natal’s water woes.
The Commission named a number of municipalities within the province that were found to be in violation of the people’s rights in terms of providing clean drinking water.
These municipalities are Amajuba, eThekwini Harry Gwala, Ilembe District, Ugu District, Umgungundlovu District, Umzinyathi District, uThukela District, King Cetshwayo District, and the Zululand District Municipality.
This was revealed on Monday during a SAHRC briefing, where the Commission released its final report for the KZN water inquiry, which ran over the course of a week in August last year.
Commissioners Philele Ntuli, Chris Nissen and Professor Tafadzwa Mabhaudhi, who has conducted extensive research into water use, headed the inquiry and visited regions of the province where complaints about access to water came from.
Over 600 complaints were received, the SAHRC confirmed.
These complaints did not mean that residents were left without water entirely, but indicated the days, weeks, or sometimes months they went without having access to clean drinking water.
Commissioner Ntuli delivered the SAHRC’s findings and recommendations to the implicated municipalities.
Ntuli said the Commission rendered the report cognisant of the damages it sustained during the 2023 floods, the 2022 floods, and the civil unrest in July 2021, where infrastructure, homes, and the lives of thousands were destroyed.
The stark difference in access to water between rural and urban communities was also taken into consideration, given the history of South Africa and spatial planning practices by the apartheid regime.
Ntuli also mentioned that the Commission is reporting its findings, having recently learned that eThekwini Municipality will be hosting the World Water Conference in 2025, as announced on X (formerly known as Twitter) by the municipality on Sunday.
"The commission finds that in KwaZulu-Natal, municipalities in general and water service authorities in particular have violated residents’ rights to access clean drinking water as provided for in national, constitutional, and statutory provisions.
"This violation of rights is aggravated by the pervasive sense of neglect, disregard, and, in some instances, contempt for people’s suffering and their attempts to engage their municipality through officials and elected representatives.
"The extent of the challenges of access to water and the rights violations expressed and experienced, evident by the complaints tabled by residents in communities throughout the province of KwaZulu-Natal, is profound and indicative of systemic failures in water provisioning and the violation of multiple human rights," Ntuli said, adding that the need for water in KZN far exceeds its supply.
"Nonetheless, the Commission finds that these challenges outlined by municipalities and water service authorities reflect poor planning and management of resources, particularly in relation to non-revenue water and maintenance of infrastructure, a reluctance to deal with corruption and non-performance, and an inability to plan for future needs," Ntuli added.
She said it was unacceptable in the eyes of the Commission that, after 29 years of overthrowing the apartheid regime, it did not reverse the spatial planning practices adopted by the former government.
IOL has since reached out to both the eThekwini Municipality and uThukela District Municipality regarding their stance on some of the statements made in the report, particularly about the Alfred Duma Municipality in uThukela.
The SAHRC stated that residents had no water at night and over weekends, and women were exposed to gender-based violence when being forced to get water from rivers.
Another region that reported a somewhat extreme case was Port Shepstone, in the Ugu District, as the commission explained there was no evidence of maintenance to its water infrastructure in 25 years.
Mabhaudhi said Ugu residents lost jobs in the tourism industry as a result of the water crisis which pushed visitors away.
Arguably one of the hardest pills to swallow out of the SAHRC’s briefing was when Ntuli said that the water tanker system, a mechanism introduced to alleviate the plight of residents during water outages, had become an abused profiteering system for those administering it.
Ntuli said the water tanker system was not working and that in some cases, community members with power and influence were prioritised by those operating the tankers while others were left without water for that particular period.
IOL has also reached out to the SAHRC to find out which municipalities in particular were found to be criminalising the water tanker system and is awaiting their feedback.
IOL