Joburg water crisis: How GNU can make a difference

Johannesburg’s water crisis cannot be solved by any of the current players, especially not by the city council or its municipal-owned entity, Joburg Water.

They don’t have the money or the skills. By its own admission, Joburg Water has an infrastructure renewal backlog of R32.54 billion – money which it has no prospect of raising under the current leadership.

According to a recent Daily Maverick exposé, the Joburg Water board is top-heavy with deployed cadres – political appointees devoid of relevant qualifications. Not one board member is a professional engineer.

This, plus the entity’s track record of too many leaks and sewage spills left untended for too long, plus excavations that scar our roadscapes for months on end, make Joburg Water an unattractive investment.

Any significant financial contribution might just as well be poured down the drain. Investors with common sense wouldn’t touch this. National Treasury would attach tough conditions.

Joburg Water cannot fix leaks quickly and efficiently enough. Nor can it upgrade its infrastructure in our lifetime. And Joburg Water is hopeless at collecting sufficient revenue.

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Who, then, will take charge and resolve Joburg’s water problems? Certainly not Gauteng premier Panyaza Lesufi, who has absolved his provincial government from responsibility.

He has been trying to persuade the critics that: “By law water is the competency of national government and local authorities – not provincial governments”.

This is a cop out. Many have pointed out the leading role played by former Western Cape premier Helen Zille when dealing with the threat of “water day zero”.

In January 2018, Zille announced she was taking charge because, “sticking to the province’s constitutional mandate of support and oversight is not enough in these circumstances”.

In doing so she was not usurping anyone’s role. Cooperation between different spheres of government is central to our constitutional order. That’s why we have a department of cooperative government and traditional affairs.

All spheres of government are supposed to work together to achieve common goals.

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People, including premiers, behave differently with the authority vested in them.

Water-shy Lesufi is quite happy to interfere in municipal governance, arranging to topple metro mayors and install puppets.

This adds to the instability which contributes to shambles such as that at Joburg Water.

But when it comes to helping resolve the water crisis, Lesufi folds his arms and says, not my job.

He is, in fact, central to the water problem. The government of national unity (GNU) which he despises – and which he refuses to replicate at provincial level – could assist in accessing funds that would have to be closely monitored.

The intervention required is not the Alex mafia style of Lesufi’s provincial government.

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Nor that of Nomvula Mokonyane, around whom the whiff of whisky and chickens from Bosasa hangs more heavily than the big-time scandals that occurred when she was water affairs minister.

The Zondo commission recommended that she be prosecuted. We wait.

And suffer her legacy.

Water in Joburg and Gauteng needs intervention of the type the DA brings to the GNU: getting things done efficiently, which includes rooting out corruption.

That terrifies the Alex mafia. Until they are removed, our water woes will continue.