Bureaucratic paralysis is pushing SA to the brink of ruin

By this time tomorrow, water-shedding will be under way in two provinces, for two very different reasons.

In the Eastern Cape, tourism hamlets within the Kouga municipality started rationing water last Monday, cutting supply to homes and businesses between 10am and 4pm daily.

With supply dams in the region almost down to the sludge, the municipality, which incorporates the towns of Jeffreys Bay, Humansdorp and St Francis, is desperately trying to push back a looming Day Zero.

About 70km away, Nelson Mandela Bay is hurtling towards the same fate, having battled a debilitating drought since 2015. Taps in 40% of the metro are due to run dry by the end of June.

But in the neighbouring province of KwaZulu-Natal, water-shedding kicks off in Durban tomorrow for quite the opposite reason. Flood-ravaged infrastructure cannot purify enough water to meet demand.

The eThekwini municipality says rationing has become necessary due to reduced supply from the Durban Heights water treatment plant. The shortfall is expected for the next 10-12 months.

While the water challenges in these two provinces appear at face value to have been caused by contrasting elements, there are similarities.

Yes, climate change is playing havoc with weather patterns, and extreme conditions are becoming more commonplace. But those warnings have been coming for years, and what has SA done to plan for it? It's a question we all know the answer to: very little. Because the term "'infrastructure maintenance” seems to cause instant bureaucratic paralysis. A decades-long lack of adequate maintenance on roads, railways and the electricity grid is pushing SA to the brink of ruin.

We must demand more from the government, which is supposed to use the large chunk of our taxes to ensure functional service delivery. Are electricity and water too much to ask for?

A sizeable 30% of Nelson Mandela's Bay's water is lost to leaks, according to the department of water & sanitation. Residents claim some of those leaks have not been fixed in months, if not years.

In sloth-like style, the government only recently undertook to assist the Nelson Mandela Bay Metro fast-track the completion of the Nooitgedacht water scheme — a project that was first commissioned in 1993 to supply water from the Orange-Fish river system.

The first drops were delivered on March 31. But even that has not prevented Day Zero approaching.

Next door in KwaZulu-Natal, experts say the April floods highlighted weaknesses in eThekwini's water system, and that the design and construction of pipe crossings over rivers and streams and the location of critical infrastructure requires rethinking.

Residents in areas including Shallcross, Crossmoor and Northdene have had intermittent water supply since the floods damaged the water treatment works. Meanwhile, large sections of sewerage reticulation pipelines damaged in the floods continue to spew untreated sewage into the ocean. Surely authorities should have moved with urgency to fix this.

Access to clean water is a basic human right, and failing to address the state of SA's water supply is a violation of that right

The problem is not exclusive to these two provinces. Ageing infrastructure is synonymous with water supply issues in towns and cities across SA.

In Johannesburg, regular water outages have severely impacted the running of hospitals and businesses. Last month, the city tabled a R77.3bn budget aimed mostly at fixing broken infrastructure, with the metro’s power and water utilities getting the biggest cut.

We hope some of it will be used to seal off the many entry points to its underground pipeline systems, following the tragic incident last weekend in which a six-year-old boy fell into an uncovered manhole. The search for him is still on, with little hope of finding him alive.

Locals say the uncovered manhole was reported two years ago. The city says it has no record of this, but the case illustrates how a lack of basic maintenance can have devastating consequences.

Access to clean water is a basic human right, and failing to address the state of SA's water supply is a violation of that right. 

Together, the issues we identify should serve as a reminder that, as a country, we should take more seriously the question of infrastructure maintenance, not just for water provision, but for other essential services, too.