Image: Bram Lammers/Bram Lammers Photography for PARI
By Tracy Ledger
Despite the Constitution and the progressive pro-poor promises, administrative practices have largely abandoned this approach and instead focused on a cost-recovery, user-pays model in which poor households are seen as a problem, and not a priority.
Water is essential to human existence and well-being: access to sufficient, clean water is central to sanitation, human health and quality of life. This was recognised as a human right by the United Nations (UN) in 2010.
The components of access are physical access to a reliable, clean and safe supply and the ability to afford sufficient water. The WHO has defined sufficient as 50–100 litres per person per day, although that amount only supports a minimum use of a flush toilet, and does not allow for other household water uses, such as a home vegetable garden.
Apart from water quality and reliability, the main barrier to realising the human right to water is affordability: that is, poverty is a key obstacle to universal access to sufficient water. The 2015 UN Special Rapporteur report on the human rights to water and sanitation emphasises affordability and the state’s responsibilities.
Our research into equitable access to water in South Africa emphasises the following key affordability issues:
- The importance of concrete affordability provisions in policy, rather than vague commitments;
- Paying for water should not limit a household’s ability to acquire other basic essentials, such as food or shelter.
- It is the responsibility of the state to determine whether or not water is affordable, and to take remedial action where it is not, including the provision of free water.
Only 52 countries guarantee access to water as a human right, and South Africa is one of these. Section 27 (1) (b) of the Constitution states that “everyone has the right to sufficient food and water”.
A wide range of policy documents clearly commit the state to universal access to sufficient water and recognise that affordability is a key component of this access. These policies’ main benefits are seen in physical access to piped water, which has increased substantially since 1994, both in terms of geographic coverage and water access points within homes and yards.
Despite this progress, however, the other requisite components of a human-rights-based approach to universal water access do not look as good.
The quality of water services has declined steadily over the past decade
The 2023 Blue Drop National Report found that 46% of South Africa’s drinking water supply is unsafe for human consumption. The basic requirement of safe water is not being met for millions of households. Despite repeated assurances that something will be done, there are few signs of any improvement.
In terms of ensuring universal access to sufficient water, the situation is as bad: the 1994 White Paper on Water Supply and Sanitation Policy set the basic water supply at 25 litres per person per day – less than half of the amount recommended by the WHO (50-100 litres per day).
The 1994 White Paper acknowledges that this amount “is not considered to be adequate for a full, healthy and productive life” and the 1997 White Paper on a National Water Policy for South Africa is also clear that this basic amount is insufficient to cover even the minimum use of a flush toilet.
That is, it is official government policy that the sufficient amount of water to be provided to households will ensure that they remain trapped in inadequate, unhealthy and unproductive lives and cannot make use of improved sanitation.
Setting the basic minimum water-provision allowance well below what is considered sufficient from a human-rights perspective has effectively tainted all other water-provision policy, since it is now a well-established view within the state that if households can access this basic amount of water, the state has fulfilled its constitutional obligations.
In terms of affordable water, the situation is worse. South Africa has very high poverty rates: more than half of all households live below the upper-bound poverty line, and one-quarter live below the food poverty line – meaning that the entire household income is insufficient to purchase a limited basket of food, let alone meet minimum nutritional requirements.
At the same time, poorer households tend to be larger than wealthier households, which means that the minimum sufficient water requirement of a poor household is generally higher than a wealthier one. Where households find it impossible to reduce their usage to an affordable level, they often face harsh restrictions imposed by the state in the form of forced prepaid water meters or flow restriction devices that deliver water at literally a trickle.
The Free Basic Water Policy is not an adequate response in its current form
The Free Basic Water (FBW) policy aims to ensure that all poor households have access to sufficient water. The cost of subsidising this allocation is not carried by municipalities; they each receive an annual allocation from the national budget, reflecting the estimated number of poor households.
While the policy’s aim is good, its implementation falls far short of its promises. Firstly, the amount of the FBW (6 kilolitres per household per month) is too low; far below the WHO recommendation. Even the state is clear that this is an inadequate amount, especially for larger poor households. This minimum amount does not support the use of improved sanitation, nor does it allow for the irrigation of a home food garden.
In addition, there are serious problems with the FBW’s implementation: the free basic services (electricity, water, sanitation and waste removal) are intended to be allocated only to registered indigent households.
Municipalities have complete authority to decide the criteria for indigent status and over the past 10 years, the number of registered indigent households has fallen, while poverty has increased and the payment allocations from the national budget have also increased.
There are currently fewer than three million registered indigent households across South Africa, while almost 11 million live below the upper-bound poverty line and 4.3 million live below the food poverty line.
National Treasury provides funding for 11 million households to receive the package of free basic services, but municipalities do not pass these benefits on to households.
However, in many municipalities (including the City of Johannesburg) all households receive the 6KL per month FBW allowance. This reflects the original intention that the minimum water allocation would be a universal benefit.
This, however is changing: both National Treasury and the Department of Water and Sanitation have flagged the financial unsustainability of continuing to provide the FBW allowance to all households. Johannesburg Water has indicated on several occasions that in the future, free water will be restricted to registered indigent households.
Given that so many poor households are not on these registers, the likely outcome is that, over the next few years, millions of households may be deprived of their human right to water by being forced to pay for it.
How ‘affordable’ is water for poor households?
What could we conclude about the affordability of a sufficient amount of water if households do not receive the FBW allowance? Using the City of Johannesburg as an example and a four-person household:
- If we assume a minimum requirement of 100 litres per person per day (the upper limit of the WHO recommendation, but still inadequate for full use of flush toilets), we derive a water requirement of 12 000 litres (12kl) per household per month.
- At current City of Johannesburg tariffs (and assuming that the first 6KL is no longer free), that will cost R406.28.
- For households living below the food poverty line, the entire tariff should automatically be deemed unaffordable because any payment will require the household to divert expenditure from an already inadequate food budget.
- For households living below the lower-bound poverty line (with a total household income of less than R4 424 per month – 40% of all households) the same approach applies: the priority in a household must be essential items. The cost of a minimum calorie basket of food for such a household can be equated to the food poverty line – R3 176 per month. (A minimum nutrition basket would cost around R5 277.93). Deducting this cost from household income would leave R1 248 in the household budget for all other items – accommodation, transport, electricity and water. Paying for the 12kl of water will take one-third of this disposable income. This should not be considered affordable against any human-rights metric.
How can we remedy this situation?
The overarching issue is the state’s failure to prioritise a human-rights-based approach to access to sufficient water. Despite the Constitution and the progressive pro-poor promises made in many policies, administrative practices have largely abandoned this approach and instead focused on a cost-recovery, user-pays model in which poor households are seen as a problem, and not a priority.
Numerous actions are required to change this – some can be achieved in a relatively short time; others are more complex and can only be realistically addressed over the longer term. Short-term actions are the following:
- The minimum basic water allowance must be revised upwards;
- The household indigent registration policy must be restructured and the Free Basic Services programme properly implemented;
- Concrete affordability standards must be developed in close consultation with affected communities;
- The gap in oversight in providing sufficient, affordable water for everyone must be addressed.
The bottom line is that, in a human-rights-based approach, it is the state’s responsibility to determine whether consumers are – based on their actual circumstances – able to pay the levied tariff for the water that they require, and to take appropriate action when they cannot.
