This speech was delivered by GOOD MP Shaun August, during the budget Vote on Water and Sanitation in Parliament today.
25 May 2021
Honourable Chair
Every single South African and every part of our economic system depends on the safe and sustainable provision of water.
This is why the National Department of Water and Sanitation must take its critical role more seriously.
The Department must implement our world-leading water legislation.
This is something critical when discussing this budget.
The Department must take action against individuals, companies and municipalities who are discharging waste and sewage in to our rivers and wetlands. The more rivers we pollute, the fewer places we can afford to get safe drinking water from.
Fining those who break the law would mean that polluters pay for the damage they cause. It would mean the communities around our rivers and wetlands would be safer.
Honourable Chair.
The Department also needs to look carefully at bulk water charges. These charges to municipalities of just a few cents per kilolitre don’t really reflect the true cost of water. The worst is that the small amounts allocated to catchment management are totally insufficient.
Cape Nature, for example, manages a lot of critical mountainous land in the Western Cape. But only R8 million per year is allocated for clearing out the thirsty, invasive trees.
On a recent oversight trip to the Northern Cape and having written to the Minister, the Akkerenedam was cleared of trees that would typically drain the dam and therefore would affect water provision to the surrounding communities.
Honourable Chair,
If we continue allocating small budgets to water resources, it means that it as an example it will take more than 300 years to clear out the catchments that Cape Nature manages. Our rivers and wetlands would have dried up long before that.
Instead of allowing expensive desalination plants to be approved, the National Department has to look at how it can promote and enhance better catchment management so that we can get more water from our mountains and keep the taps running, even in drought times.
Not only does catchment clearing create thousands and thousands of jobs, but it is also the cheapest way for us to get water.
I appeal for more realistic bulk water tariffs and insist that more money is allocated to catchment clearing.
I thank you.