Raw sewage from the overflow of the Zandspruit pump station flowing into the Klein Jukskei in Chartwell on international Day of Action for Rivers, 14 March 2023. WaterCAN did tests on this river that passes through most of Johannesburg and they regard it as highly toxic. The nearby Zandspruit Pump station has been unable to cope with the load and has been spewing raw sewage into the river near the confluence of the Zandspruit river for at least six months. Picture: Neil McCartney / The Citizen
Despite warnings that South Africa will run out of water by 2030, experts and activists say the country is likely to experience a severe drought before then.
South Africa’s water resources and infrastructure are at a critical point, according to executive director of Water Community Action Network (WaterCAN) Dr Ferrial Adam, who also said it was time for South Africans to charge municipal managers and take them to court.
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“The challenge is national government uses a cooperative governance clause as a reason not to charge municipalities. We must lay criminal charges against municipal managers – it is the only way to change behaviour,” she noted.
“We need to hold them accountable for operating sewage treatment plants with expired water use licences, the lack of water and sanitation master plans and progress in implementation plans, among others.”
Speaking at the “Clean Water is Everyone’s Human Right” webinar, Adam said with high levels of industrial and government pollution, water resources in SA were at risk and “it’s time to take action”.
“As concerned citizens, we need to be the eyes and ears to monitor our water resources and hold polluters accountable.
“Our water situation is dire, we are killing off ecosystems and we do not have enough water as it is, deepening the crisis and making us more vulnerable to what is going on. We are in a peculiar situation [which is] why we are trying to build a water network of activists and mobilise.”
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She said WaterCAN was planning to lay criminal charges against municipal managers for pollution in the Klein Jukskei river, the lack of action and of improvement at the Bushkoppies and Goudkoppies wastewater treatment works and water shedding affecting Joburg.
WaterCAN’s Ivor Cleary was reported as saying: “E. coli upstream [in the Juskei river] was 64 000CFU/100 millilitres [colony-forming unit per 100ml] and downstream of the pump station was over 100 000CFU/100ml, which could be regarded as raw sewage.”
Social activist Mark Heywood said the country’s water resources and infrastructure was just as bad as the Eskom infrastructure.
“It’s just as bad and we need to say that loudly, because people have still not realised the magnitude of this crisis,” he said.
He said the unequal distribution and access to clean water, the quality and state of water infrastructure, droughts causing towns to run dry and corruption which has affected municipal treatment plants resulting in sewage flows into streets, rivers and groundwater, were some of the challenges the country faced.
Lawyers for Human Rights’ Palesa Maloisane said government had the obligation to protect water in order to protect the citizens’ rights to water and sanitation.
There was an urgent need for legal literacy in communities because “people need to know their rights, powers and understand the state’s duty when it comes to access to water”.
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