The cloud of drought still hangs heavy over Cape Town, while in the rest of South Africa full dams and a good-looking maize harvest have given cause to say, “it’s over”.

But a report released this week in Johannesburg by Oxfam, titled “A Harvest of Dysfunction: rethinking the approach to drought, its causes and impacts in South Africa”, argues that there is little cause to cheer. The rains have come, and officials have praised the heavens. But the deep-rooted problems of how South Africa manages its precarious water resource, and how this led to more suffering than dry skies can be blamed for, are nowhere near being fixed. The long-lasting drought exposed the many social and political faultlines that strip already vulnerable people to naked desperation, and some radical rethinking of what is meant by “drought” is needed for drought not to be synonymous with human disaster.

During the worst drought in 35 years, and in some areas in 100 years, more than half of the population (33,8 million people) had experienced insecure access to drinking water, while rising food prices which headed towards 20% inflation, and income insecurity made hunger a daily reality for a growing number of families.

“A Harvest of Dysfunction” argues that the devastation caused by the drought was not simply a consequence of poor rainfall and the strongest El Niño on record; it arose from a failure to address structural vulnerabilities. Lessons from the drought can develop more effective responses to such a crisis, and put the country on a more equitable and sustainable path.

Food-price escalations – resulting from an unregulated market and compounded by drought-induced supply constraints – had and continue to have a devastating impact on vulnerable people. Women are particularly affected; they are compelled to work ever harder to provide their families with the food and water they need to live healthy, productive and dignified lives. The country’s food staple, white maize, is at the mercy of speculative and financial dynamics that extend beyond South Africa, placing the entire region’s food security at constant risk.

References by government officials and politicians to drought as a ‘God-given’ event – and their palpable relief that rain has now fallen in parts of the country – create the illusion that South Africa has survived the crisis and can put the problems of drought behind it. This denies the reality of severe drought as a slow-onset disaster that systematically strips away layers of resilience, resulting in poverty, insecurity and hunger for growing numbers of people.

The drought exposed inequalities in income and access to land and water which exacerbated its ongoing impact. To mitigate future combinations of recurrent droughts, stronger El Niño effects and rising temperatures as a result of climate change, urgent changes are necessary.

Government’s responses to the drought were slow, sporadic and badly targeted. Despite the range and extent of impacts across society, it refused to declare a national emergency. By defining the drought in the narrowest terms – i.e. as a single event caused by low rainfall – the government response was limited, overlooked those people and groups who most need support, and missed a crucial opportunity to address the structural problems that have been laid bare by the drought. As the effects of climate change unfold, it is an opportunity that South Africa and the wider region can’t afford to miss.

While equitable redistribution of water for multiple purposes is a social and political imperative, overall national consumption of water must be reduced in the face of climate change and demographic pressures. The drought also makes clear the need to rethink key agrarian issues – and to balance water use and its conservation with efficient food production, and the availability of sufficient, nutritious, affordable food. These are policy challenges in ‘normal’ times. As recurrent drought becomes ‘the new normal’, these challenges will escalate if they are not effectively confronted now.

The key findings of Oxfam’s research are:

A narrow definition of drought limits the range of necessary relief

The official and popular definitions of drought in terms of reduced rainfall are too narrow to describe the spread and severity of its impacts, and perpetuate an understanding of drought as a singular event rather than as an extended, multi-factor process. Most importantly, it fails to take into account the social and political dimensions of drought. The effect of such narrow definitions is to limit the range of necessary relief-related interventions.

Poor governance of the water resource in key respects created the crisis

The drought exposed hazardous shortcomings in the planning and management of the country’s water resource. South Africa is a water-scarce country, already subject to recurrent droughts, and – unless this is rectified – faces the prospect that water supplies in more and more areas will run out. The challenge is that reduced water consumption and recycling need to happen at the same time as redressive redistribution to extend water services to those who have historically been deprived of them.

Drought combined with unregulated food markets resulted in food inflation that pushes ever-increasing numbers of people into acute hunger, creating a national and regional crisis.

The most extensive, national impact of the drought was and still is on food prices and the capacity of low-income households to purchase sufficient quantities of nutritious food for their families. Food inflation has drawn more families into a crisis of hunger and low-income households were forced to substitute protein-rich foods with flavoured starches.

Rethink agriculture.

The drought greatly exacerbated trends in agriculture that favour large-scale producers over smaller farmers and labourers, including the concentration of landholdings and integration of large commercial producers in input and output markets. These dynamics drive social inequality. The combined effects of recurrent droughts, water scarcity and climate change suggest that it is time to rethink agriculture and its role in South Africa’s economy and food system.

The Oxfam report therefore recommends that:

Drought be redefined to enable an appropriate response

The drought is not simply an agricultural disaster; it is, more importantly, a social disaster in terms of its universal impact of food-price escalations. Therefore:

A national emergency should (have been) declared.

A universal disaster grant should have come into immediate effect in recognition of the impact of the drought on food prices and the costs of securing water. A universal grant would be relatively simple and cost-effective to implement, given that South Africa already has an extensive system of social grant administration.

‘Drought’ should be redefined to ensure a greater understanding of causes and its ramifications across society, ensuring a long-term, equitable response.

There be an equitable and sustainable redistribution of water
State governance of the public and private sectors is critical for a sustainable water system and the fair distribution of water for human and ecological needs. This requires long-term planning, with limits set to growth based on the water resource, and careful monitoring of climate change and relevant adaptive planning. Therefore:

Extended demand and rightful share should be met through recycling, tightened restrictions on the use of potable water, prioritisation and careful management of groundwater to supplement surface water use, domestic harvesting, and soil moisture maintenance practices.

The state roll-out of rainwater tanks should be extended to all low-income households, with reserve back-ups in the form of community reservoirs and community-managed boreholes.

Water management policy implementation should focus on water conservation and water demand management, including in the distribution system, urban and agricultural uses, and catchment management, as well as tighter restrictions on users as the norm.

Maintenance of existing water storage, provisioning and treatment facilities must be reprioritised to address the recent maintenance neglect.

Public investment decisions, for example in the case of mining and nuclear energy, should be based on water allocation assessments and the real and full costs of water consumption and pollution.

Penalties should be applied for wasteful water use and pollution, and incentives given for the development of domestic, industrial and agricultural recycling practices.

Controlled allocations of water for human life (drinking, cooking and cleaning), household food gardens, and non-profit small livestock farming systems (poultry, goats and sheep) should be free.

Consumption-linked charges should be imposed on higher-use households.

Full costs of water should be charged for profit-making, in for example agriculture and industry.

A ‘sin tax’ could be extended to certain middle-class consumption goods which use high amounts of water in production (eg. beef, coffee and chocolate).

All South Africans be able to access affordable, nutritious food
Strategies to reduce the impact of drought on the cost of food across the country and the region involve both short- and longer-term interventions. Amongst these, food policy should prioritise the price of the white maize staple both for South Africans and the region. Therefore provision should be made for:

An emergency universal grant, pegged at inflation on low-income household nutritional food baskets. Alternatively, together with the declaration of a national emergency , all social grants should be increased by food-inflation rates on low-income households. The availability and requirements for accessing the Social Relief for Emergency Grant should be widely publicised.

Mechanisms for stabilising the price of white maize need to be investigated, including delinking white maize from market dynamics through input subsidies, state-provided crop insurance schemes, milling cooperatives (possibly state-owned enterprises), floor-price ceilings and state purchase guarantees.

Indebted farms growing white maize should be redistributed to small and emerging commercial farmers, and appropriate support provided to enable productivity.

Farming and agricultural relief require a rethink

The agrarian structure is vulnerable to crises, including drought and political and economic shocks. It is imperative that a new structure comes into being – one that supports a more equal society and can potentially regenerate the rural economy. Therefore:

Immediate drought relief in the form of feed and fodder transfers should be directed at owners of small livestock (chickens and goats) rather than owners of cattle. That is, direct support should be given to a broader range of livestock owners, and aimed at livestock that require less support to keep alive (per unit) and meet the needs of a greater number of low-income consumers.

Support to small-scale cattle farmers should be directed at restocking breeding cows once the risk of drought is over. If they have guarantees of state support to do this, farmers should be persuaded to reduce herds and focus on keeping a smaller number of breeding stock alive.

Land should be redistributed to small-scale and emerging commercial farmers, with appropriate technological and production support, including access to credit and produce markets, subsidised insurance and climate adaptation strategies.

The extension of irrigation to stimulate the rural economy, as proposed in the National Development Plan, should be subject to ongoing review.

Bigger allocations of public funds should be made to develop and support climate-adapting and agro-ecologically resilient small-farming methods, which are less water-demanding and are geared to meeting multipurpose household farming systems.

This is an edited summary of the Oxfam report, “A Harvest of Dysfunction”, by Donna Hornby, Yves Vanderhaeghen, Dirk Versveld and Mnqobi Ngubane. The full report is available at www.oxfam.org.za