Hon Chair, let me formally apologise. I have come directly from the portfolio committee meeting. Thank you very much for understanding.
Our country and people are reaping the bitter-sweet fruits of the success of our national democratic revolution through a South Africa transformed from the social and economic consequences of the brutal apartheid, colonial, racially discriminatory laws and practices to create a united, nonracial, nonsexist democracy.
South Africa's critical infrastructure for water and sanitation, particularly its waste-water treatment works, was constructed some 75 years ago with a carrying capacity that was meant to service only 13% of the total population of the country, or 5 million people. The
rest of the population was deliberately left to use contaminated water and other forms of undignified and unhygienic sanitation facilities.
With the advent of democracy, which opened up the opportunity for all to have access to quality water and decent sanitation, this apartheid, colonial, water-infrastructure legacy is collapsing because of its age and also because it must now serve the current 58 million people of South Africa. However, the different population groups, without formalised race-based restraints, continue to enjoy different levels of access to quality water and decent sanitation. This is thanks to the historical spatial inequality which perpetuates the legacy of the colonial, apartheid, racist past.
I have just come from a big debate in the portfolio committee about the pollution of the Vaal River system. That is a direct consequence of this.