BOSA rejects Minister’s attempt to pass responsibility for water crisis onto municipalities

5 August 2024

Build One South Africa (BOSA) takes note of today’s press briefing by the Minister of Water and Sanitation, Pemmy Majodina, in which an attempt was made to pass the blame for South Africa’s water supply crisis from her department onto municipalities.

In the Minister’s first briefing since being appointed, she said that people “[d]o not seem to appreciate that the provision of water services is the responsibility of municipalities not the national Department of Water and Sanitation (DWS). It would be a priority for us to correct this misunderstanding, and to encourage communities and leaders to hold their municipalities accountable.”

The Minister is being economical with the truth. The DWS’s mandate is to ensure that the country’s water resources are optimised and has been allocated R42.6 billion of public money this financial year alone to carry out this mandate. It is the DWS that is ultimately responsible for water services in the country.

Furthermore, in terms of the provision of water to households, the Minister and the Department’s hands are not tied as she would have you believe. The Water Services Act makes it possible that where municipalities are struggling to distribute water, they can hand over distribution authority to NPOs and private service providers to perform that function.

We urge Minister Majodina to launch an investigation to ascertain which municipalities are struggling to distribute water, and then to instruct the transfer of distribution to capable NPOs and private service providers.

In addition, I will be submitting a number of written parliamentary questions to the Minister Majodina on infrastructure spend, backlogs and underspending by the Department.

Citizens should not be surprised that we have an imminent water crisis in South Africa. It has been hiding in plain sight and is the outcome of a government either indifferent to the impact of the lack of reliable water supply to its citizens or lacking the political will to do something about it.

BOSA will continue to work with communities to ensure that every South African has access to clean water. This is a basic constitutional right that no government should deny.

Issued by Nobuntu Hlazo-Webster, BOSA Deputy Leader, 5 August 2024