Rethinking South Africa's Water Security

In ensuring water security for future generations in South Africa, more emphasis should be placed on water conservation and water usage, rather than on huge-scale projects like the expansion of the Lesotho Highlands Water Project (LHWP). The conceptualisation of water security through the alarmist 'water wars' hypothesis should also be discouraged.

Published on 10 May 2011 in ISS Today

By

Timothy Walker
Maritime Project Leader and Senior Researcher, ISS Pretoria

Timothy Walker, Intern, African Conflict Prevention Programme, ISS Pretoria Office

It has long been a popular assumption that the major wars and conflicts of the future will be fought over water. This has framed the thinking around which most states and communities around the world, South Africa included, have sought to ensure water security. However, the situation in South Africa is not so dire as one might imagine in lieu of the ‘water wars’ hypothesis, as the opportunities for cooperation and equitable use that exist are greater than realised. Unfortunately, however, the approach that has been taken by South Africa in managing its water, might ironically, lead to greater insecurity at local community levels and turn the hypothesis into a self-fulfilling prophecy.

So far, there appears to be an increasing emphasis in South Africa on augmenting supply or limiting demand, rather than a focus on conservation and usage.

Mike Muller, former director-general of the Department of Water Affairs and Forestry recently speculated that an expansion of the Lesotho Highlands Water Project (LHWP) would ease the insecurity over water in Gauteng. This in itself, places too much emphasis on a project as a cure to water insecurity and fails to confront or interrogate the undergirding values and concepts that have constituted the processes and policies pursued in securing South Africa’s system of water supply. Arguably, great prominence must be placed on the sustainable conservation of water throughout the system, which Muller has also encouragingly emphasised, especially once it reaches cities and urban areas, which is the point at which it is most easily lost.

The LHWP is a concrete manifestation of the thinking that has dominated South African decision-making since its inception. Concerns over looming water insecurity were addressed through the engineering of water transfer projects between distant river basins on a vast scale, and the relative success of such projects in maintaining the supply has arguably limited imagination to locating and transferring water to wherever it is required. This is unsustainable given the context of climate change and urbanisation, in which all available water sources within the state and the region will eventually be captured. Questions also linger over whether communities will benefit from this guaranteed supply if a huge amount of water is lost through out-dated infrastructure or wasteful practices. The systems in place are also dependent on a high quality and unimpeded supply.

Policy and decision making on water matters in South Africa, as well as conceptualising and theorising has therefore taken place in an almost unique context, which has resulted in a specific confluence of unique water-related problems. A lot of recent emphasis has been placed on issues like Acid Mine Drainage (AMD).

AMD occurs when disused and neglected mine shafts fill with water from rain and water lost to leaking infrastructure. The water dissolves with many of the chemicals and residue left over from mining. In 2010 AMD briefly captured public imagination and fears, but these have been largely assuaged as a result of study into the problem by a task team appointed to offer advice and recommendations to the Inter-Ministerial Committee (IMC) on AMD. The report that was issued encouragingly noted that the complexity of the situation throughout South Africa should prevent any single solution being decided too quickly and conveniently. It proposes immediate solutions such as pumping out water, but all future approaches to dealing with the issue must be cognisant that AMD is an indirect result of the water system currently in place and the relative disregard in ensuring that water is not wasted.

AMD is a clear and present danger, one that must be dealt with as soon as possible, but to properly ensure that such an instance does not reoccur, the upgrading of infrastructure becomes increasingly important.

South Africa is forecasted to enter into water scarcity within a few years. This is compounded by the contextual factors of South Africa’s water scarcity relative to the rest of the region, despite having the largest population and largest economic centres.

Increased supply cannot be carried out through existing infrastructure, and the pressure of balancing this demand amidst other service delivery problems becomes an increasing worry. This is not a problem unique to South Africa, where it has been estimated that up to a third of water supplied to urban areas is lost. 

South Africa has helped in the institutionalisation of the management of water and peaceful cooperation on the state level and participates in numerous organisations such as the Orange-Senqu River Basin Commission (ORASCOM), but this needs to be accompanied at the domestic level by the use of more efficient apparatus and a reorientation of ideas towards conservation.

All things considered, there are more causes for optimism than in past years. Within the discourse on water security a nascent holism in thinking has been encouraged. The AMD report, as well as the recent South African Energy and Water Forum (SAWEF) has acknowledged the inherent complexity of the context within which policy and decisions must be made.

Ensuring that human security is prioritised requires a systematic process that also engages directly with consumers of water, encouraging in some way more responsible consumption as well as conservation. Storing available water, as well as conserving and purifying existing water sources is a neglected area and opens space for private industry and investment which would also be able to supply apparatus, such as water tanks and purification equipment whilst encouraging more efficient household and industrial water usage. A privatised option is however not a general solution given the controversy over privatised water in countries throughout the world. Overall, there must be greater encouragement given to revaluing water, so that conservation, storage and proper contextualised use is undertaken.

South Africa leads the world in ensuring that water access is recognised as a basic right in it’s constitution, but ensuring that such a right is implemented and enforced requires that all of us continue with a systematic rethinking about how water security along responsible human security lines is attained for all at no one’s expense.