Water Plan for South Africa: GOOD welcomes new momentum. 

Water Plan for South Africa: GOOD welcomes new momentum.
 
Mark Rountree, National Policy Officer for GOOD.
3rd December, 2019
 
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GOOD welcomes the National Department of Water and Sanitation’s new Water Master Plan for South Africa.
 
 
Mark Rountree, GOOD’s National Policy Officer, has worked in the water resources sector for almost two decades and has welcomed this sign of new momentum and the Minister of Housing, Water and Sanitation’s statements strongly supporting sustainable management of the country’s water resources. 
 
 
“The National Water Act is 21 years old, but enactment and enforcement has been weak or absent.  This has resulted in very poor management of the country’s water resources, and a very slow pace of water rights allocation reform” he said.  “The former National Government’s trickle down system for water allocation – based on Dutch water rights that allowed landowners at the top to take as much as they liked – had to stop.  In 1998, the National Department expropriated all water rights in South Africa, but the promised efficiencies from catchment-based management and assurances of more equitable water allocations have been slow to be realised.”
 
 
“The Department’s Water Plan highlights that just 5% of agricultural water is used by black farmers, meaning that the reallocation of water has not even been able to keep pace with the very slow pace of agricultural land reform.”  Rountree said that “the accelerated release of land for restitution purposes announced by Minister De Lille last month will require the pace of water allocation rights to keep up.”  
 
 
GOOD’s leader, Patricia de Lille, is the Minister of Public Works and Infrastructure.  Between 1999 and 2019, the Department had released 181 properties totalling more than 11,000 hectares for Land Restitution purposes, but in November 2019, de Lille announced that already a further 100 parcels of land had been made available for restitution purposes.
 
 
GOOD advocates for spatial, social, economic and environmental justice in South Africa, and for using public land for public good.  Rountree said that “we welcome the greater commitments to protecting and restoring the critical ecological infrastructure and promises of more equitable water rights distribution.  The time for action is long overdue.”
 
 
Ends