Water is the new load-shedding
Opposition parties have identified water and infrastructure as key issues for voters
The collapse of South Africa’s water infrastructure is becoming the single most important issue — superseding even loadshedding — going into the 29 May national and provincial elections.
The ANC hopes interventions by the department of water and sanitation before the poll will come on line in time to placate disillusioned voters in communities in which crises were identified during campaigning.
Communities around the country — from Johannesburg to rural Kwazulu-natal — are increasingly left without the life-giving resource due to the collapse, for lengthy periods, of municipal and district-level infrastructure.
Damage to pump stations caused by load-shedding and poor maintenance has also interrupted water supply, while water throttling is being applied by some municipalities, with supplies being reduced or restricted to households for long periods.
And as election day nears, opposition parties operating under the Multi-party Charter for South Africa have clearly identified the collapse of infrastructure — and water reticulation, in particular — as key points on which to apply pressure on the governing party going into the poll.
They hope that the government’s failure to supply communities with water will shift ANC voters — and those who did not vote in the 2019 national and provincial elections — towards the opposition coalition on election day.
On Wednesday, leaders of the Democratic Alliance (DA), the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) and other parties involved in the charter launched their strategy for addressing the water and infrastructure crises should they manage to dislodge the ANC at the polls. They did so at Umkomaas, south of Durban, which falls under the ethekwini Metro’s ward 99, which recently had no water for 18 days — the latest in a series of interruptions that date back to 2016.
Residents have been waiting for roads washed away in the April 2022 floods to be repaired — work hasn’t started yet — and the local railway station has been stripped of anything
of value by thieves, lying idle since the Covid-19 lockdown.
DA leader John Steenhuisen said that underspending and neglect in infrastructure “goes beyond loadshedding to encompass a water system in crisis, a municipal sewerage system crisis, a collapsing rail system and a severely overburdened road network”. This had a massive impact on people’s lives — and would hopefully also encourage them to go to the polling booth on 29 May.
“What load-shedding and infrastructure damage has done is demonstrate to people — in particular the 14 million who did not come out to vote and who may not be interested in politics — that politics is interested in you,” Steenhuisen told the Mail & Guardian.
Politics has “reached into your home and turned off the water” which “shows people that their vote is directly linked to how they live,” Steenhuisen said.
IFP president Velenkosini Hlabisa shared his view, saying that in ward 99 and elsewhere, ANC supporters were suffering from the same water shortages as everybody else and that this may influence how people voted.
“Even the people who belong to the party that is governing our country, when it is load-shedding, we are all in darkness. When there is no water in ward 99 for 18 days, even members of the ruling party will stay without water,” Hlabisa said.
“2024 should not be about loving the history of the party that governs, it should be about fixing the damage done by that party by assisting it to be taken out of power,” Hlabisa said.
The 11 charter parties have committed to a common post-election programme to fix water and public infrastructure, which hinges on private sector investment and involvement in water and infrastructure provision; and managing demand for water while boosting supply.
Steenhuisen said they would promote public-private partnerships (PPPS) “to help address infrastructure challenges by leveraging the private sector’s financial support, expertise and innovation”.
“Smart maintenance strategies” would be used to prevent breakdowns and extend infrastructure lifespan and to respond to water leaks swiftly to prevent water losses.
Water consumption practices for bulk users would be revised, while industry would be encouraged to do its own water reuse and recycling as part of a move to introduce locallevel, small-scale water treatment facilities.
Groundwater extraction through the use of boreholes would be expanded, while water-quality testing would be done using an effectbased method to reduce pollution and effluent levels in rivers and in the ocean.
The governing party has become acutely aware of the importance of water — and the need to get dry taps flowing again — in the build-up to the elections if it is to avoid losing votes over the collapse of water infrastructure.
ANC elections head Mdumiseni Ntuli told the M&G that water had become one of the most press
ing issues raised by people during campaigning.
“Water is emerging as a major, major challenge in many parts of the country, somehow superseding even load-shedding,” Ntuli said.
He said that while load-shedding had dominated the discourse during campaigning in 2023, this had shifted towards the interruptions to water supply, part of which was the knockon effect from loss of electricity.
“Almost everywhere you go, there are major, major concerns about water provision,’ Ntuli said. “I would be the first to admit the scale and magnitude of the problem.
“It is really an issue that occupies space,” he said.
The ANC had paid attention to water in its manifesto, but had not singled it out, instead dealing with it as part of the package of services, rather than an individual issue, but was acutely aware of its importance, Ntuli said.
In its manifesto, the ANC promises to give greater powers to national and provincial governments to intervene in water provision in municipalities that are failing to do so, while building maintenance capacity and completing unfinished local projects.
The governing party also undertakes to ensure proper planning and investment to address future sanitation needs and to complete all
outstanding dams and water projects that are currently under construction, within the next five years. It further promises intervention at municipal level to help councils fix water leaks using workers from the expanded public works programme and other state employment projects, which cost South Africa millions of litres of water daily.
Ntuli said that the department of water and sanitation had made a number of interventions around the country in response to crises — some of which had arisen during the election campaign.
This was the “best way” to counter the opposition focusing on the water issues, as bringing these projects on line during April would “enhance the attitude of the voter towards the Anc-led government” in affected areas, he said.
Ntuli said that it was “always a worry” when a single issue dominated public discourse ahead of the elections as it might “emerge in certain areas as a rallying point for people who are mobilising against the elections.”
There had been isolated incidents of this on voting day in 2019 in the south of ethekwini because of water outages.
“We hope that this will not repeat itself. Once there is a disruption of the election in a voting district, it raises a problem of the freeness and fairness of the election in that area,” Ntuli said.
“It may not affect the province or the district, but in that particular local area, it denies people their democratic right to decide on their government of choice,’ Ntuli said.
Ntuli said that the campaign process allowed the ANC to interact with voters and explain where
things had gone wrong, which “also works to the advantage of the ANC”.
Turning to the opposition’s focus on water and infrastructure, Ntuli said that this was to be expected as they had been unable to provide solid alternatives to voters.
“We know that they are going to be saying that they can do things better than us, but the objective reality is that none of them, except for the DA with a little bit of experience, actually have the experience to govern,” Ntuli said.