Deputy Chairperson of the NCOP, hon MECs, hon members and special delegates, the promulgation of the National Water Act, Act 36 of 1998, marked a new era in the management and delivery of water resources in South Africa.
Water as a catalyst and cornerstone of socioeconomic development must be managed, protected, conserved and allocated in the best interests of all South Africans and in accordance with the principles embedded in the National Water Resources Strategy, the NWRS.
To date, the current water resources storage facilities have, to some extent, responded positively to the needs of South Africans. However, there are still major challenges to overcome.
We all know that South Africa's water resources are limited. Studies have indicated that some water resource systems are already in deficit. If water is not conserved and allocated equitably, it will undermine the country's transformation agenda. Some provinces do not have adequate water resource storage facilities. Cases in point are the Lowveld area in Mpumalanga and the eastern parts of the Free State.
Municipalities in these areas are unable to provide reliable water services to their communities, due to a lack of storage facilities. This limitation hinders the country's ability to meet the 2014 water and sanitation targets. In this regard, the key limitation is the absence of institutions of water resource management and water boards in most parts of the country.
The design arrangement was that there would be catchment management agencies that would be responsible for water resource mobilisation management and allocation. Seventeen years into our democracy, these have not been established, and this is the case in most parts of the country.
Further, most parts of the country - especially the nonmetropolitan areas where municipalities are relatively weaker due to financial constraints - do not have water boards to undertake the functions of producing bulk potable water. These failures by national government mean that the relatively weaker municipalities have to perform these two functions or accept that they will not be able to ensure their communities' access to a water supply.
Parliament needs to seriously probe the reasons for the failure to create catchment management agencies or establish water boards in areas where there is a need for provision of bulk purified water services.
The SA Institute of Civil Engineers recently released a report on the state of water resources infrastructure in South Africa. Water resources infrastructure received a D-minus; simply put, it means that there are areas of concern about how the country's dams are being managed by the Department of Water and Environmental Affairs.
Of concern, according to the report, is the lack of sufficient maintenance and neglect of ongoing capital renewals. Furthermore, the report also indicated that salinity and purification constitute a threat that will lead to an increase in treatment costs. These things lead to a situation where water boards incur higher costs for water treatment, which they intend to pass on to the municipalities through high bulk-price increases, as we have seen in the past two years. Municipalities are then left with no option but to pass these increases on to consumers.
Unfortunately, the impact of all these things is that there is an increase in levels of nonpayment for services, which in turn leads to municipalities being unable to pay the water boards. This undermines the financial viability of our municipalities and, ultimately, service delivery and the democratic transformation project.
This indicates that water equality management has far-reaching implications beyond the water sector. It is about the very functionality of our municipalities and the democratic transformation project.
Water is life and, therefore, indispensable. Some communities do not have access to water resources because they are being told by the Department of Water and Environmental Affairs officials that the available water resources are fully allocated.
In many cases, this allocation is historical and allocated in favour of the previously advantaged, especially farmers. Needless to say, this is an issue of importance from the perspective of redressing the imbalances of the past. From our point of view, this is a transformation blind spot of the water sector. Parliament needs to facilitate a review of the allocation of the country's resources. In part, this may necessitate a focus on how and by whom decisions on water allocation are taken, in addition to reviewing the historical allocations.
We know that some parts of the country are going to face constraints in respect of access to fresh water due to climate change. As a means of adaptation to climate change some coastal municipalities will increasingly have to rely on seawater desalination.
This is currently an expensive option, in terms of both capital and operating costs. The question we are asking is: If national government is responsible for water resource mobilisation and management, why are municipalities made to contribute to the cost of investing in desalination plants?
We propose that Parliament should make a ruling that water desalination and water demand management should be seen as part of water resource mobilisation and management, be made a responsibility of national government and be funded as such.
In conclusion, going forward, water resource management should indeed make room for local voices for it to resonate with the country's democratic transformation project. I thank you. [Applause.]