Water crisis threatens basic human rights

THERE'S no denying that South Africa is experiencing a severe water crisis.

- SESHNI MOODLEY

THE SAHRC has done its part by investigating, reporting and demanding action. The question now is whether those with power over pipes, budgets and contracts will do theirs, before the taps run dry for good, says the writer. I ITUMELENG ENGLISH Independent Newspapers

It has now grown into a direct infringement on basic human rights, one of which is the constitutionally guaranteed right to access enough safe water.Lack of access to sufficient safe water has now become an everyday struggle for households across the country from Johannesburg’s dense suburbs to eThekwini’s townships and the rural communities of KwaZulu-Natal.

At the heart of the issue is a promise written into our supreme law. Section 27(1)(b) of the Constitution provides that everyone has the right to have access to sufficient safe water and imposes on the state a duty to take reasonable legislative and other measures, within its available resources, to achieve the progressive realisation of this right.

The Water Services Act goes even further. It prescribes a minimum standard of 25 litres per person per day within 200 metres of a household for not longer than seven consecutive days in any year.

When taps are dry for weeks at a time, or when the only water available is brown, stinking and contaminated, those are not just inconveniences. They also represent a violation of a constitutional guarantee.

The South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) has been sounding the alarm on this for years.

In KwaZulu-Natal, after a comprehensive provincial investigation in 2022, the Commission concluded that municipalities and Water Services Authorities had “systematically undermined” people's right of access to clean drinking water with extended shortages, poor quality and disproportionate impact on poor and rural communities.