Chairperson, it was with sadness that we read about David Makele, a resident of Makana in Grahamstown, who collapsed and died in March 2013 while looking for water. This was after days of his and his community's having been without water. Beyond the rhetoric of access to clean water being a human right or constitutional right, water is first and foremost inherent to human survival, without having spoken of sophisticated constitutional rights. Anyone denied water has been denied life, and no one deserves such a denial. David Makele did not deserve such a denial, much worse for it to have happened on the eve of National Water Week.
We not only need to value water as an essential tool to eradicate poverty, even though this is true, but we must also recognise and respect water as an enabler of life. A moral responsibility such as this, first and foremost, resides with this department. Being a state that would like to be seen as so committed to human rights, it is absolutely unacceptable that many of our poor citizens are faced with having to deal with water outages and contaminated water supplies.
It is no wonder that service delivery protests have become more violent and brutal. Whether by commission or omission, denying people access to clean water is a threat not just to livelihood, but to the right to life of every citizen. Water is life.
The anger displayed in the recent months by protesters in Hammanskraal, North West, signals that people have had enough of being denied the right to life. What do you expect from people who have had no water supply for over two months? What should they do? Must they wait passively to perish as they continue consuming contaminated water from local unclean and unsafe streams?
Similarly, wastage of millions of litres of water due to improper equipment is a failure of this department and reflects gross inconsistencies in governance. How can we have areas whose problem is wastage of clean water and in the same country we have people dying and falling ill because they have no access to clean water?
The hardworking Minister inherited a crisis. Effective governance and management is essential for service delivery. Suspension of administrative heads in the department indicates maladministration and, of course, citizens bear the brunt. To have such administrative issues when there are warnings that South Africa may face a water crisis as a result of infrastructural backlogs is a shame.
The fact that the department spent R2 billion on consultants and staff travel claims is an embarrassment. The UCDP supports Budget Vote No 38. [Time expired.] [Applause.]