The country’s significant water challenges are all worsened by graft, says a new report by Corruption Watch and the Berlin-based Water Integrity Network.
It warns how corruption in the water and sanitation sector has put the water security of businesses and households “and indeed the entire country at risk.
“Water is often not available where and when it is needed, nor of the quality needed, due to unpredictable rainfall, limited infrastructure, the misuse of financial resources, and poor management – aggravated by corruption,” says the report Money down the Drain: Corruption in South Africa’s Water Sector.
Written by Professor Mike Muller, a former director-general of the Department of Water Affairs and Forestry, it describes how many, particularly young children, old people, and those with compromised immune systems, have fallen ill from drinking unsafe water, or their homes and toilets cannot be kept hygienic. “Corruption in the water sector has resulted in deaths.”
Corruption extends from taps in rural villages to the systems that supply the country’s economic heartland.
“Village taps have run dry so that councillors and their friends could get contracts to truck water. Construction of a dam to provide water to Gauteng has been delayed by years, in part because a minister sought to change procurement rules to benefit her friends. In the Western Cape, the raising of the Clanwilliam Dam, which would create thousands of new farming jobs, has been delayed for similar reasons.
“Companies have paid bribes to get business. Some companies have promoted unnecessary projects and claimed payment for work done badly or not at all, often colluding with officials who oversee their work.
Others have monopolised specialist areas of work to grossly overcharge for their services.” Individual households are involved, too, through unauthorised, unmetered water connections, “often made by the same plumbers who maintain the supply systems, using material from their workplaces”.
These problems are compounded by the failure to appoint competent people to do the jobs required and officials being pressurised by politicians and seniors “to do the wrong thing – risking dismissal or worse if they don’t comply”.
The report analyses a key range of corruption strategies spanning the manipulation of procurement and operational processes, influencing policy and regulatory decisions, and taking control of the decision-making sites of key institutions.
Corruption in the water sector is systemic and formal rules have been “superseded by informal rules that bypass or distort formal processes”.
The combined efforts of whistle-blowers, investigative journalists, the auditor-general and the Special Investigating Unit (SIU) have begun to address the rot. “However, although some officials have resigned and others face internal disciplinary action, there have been few serious consequences.” Much of the corruption is driven by wider political and economic challenges.
“Unless these are also addressed, it’s unlikely that efforts to improve and enforce procedures and transparency will be enough to change the situation ... An effective campaign to wash corruption out of the water sector could create the environment in which larger water problems can be tackled.”
Not long ago, democratic SA was seen as a global leader in the management of water resources and the provision of water services. It had achieved its 2015 Millennium Development Goal for domestic water supply; through its free basic water policy, it had given practical effect to the Human Right to Water and SA had given legal protection to environmental water flows.
In 2002, it led the campaign to set a global goal for sanitation provision that was included in the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals.
But the performance of the water sector has significantly deteriorated:
-The reliability of water supply services is falling according to official data.
-The resilience of services to problems such as drought has decreased. While Cape Town’s temporary water restrictions gained worldwide publicity, regular supply failures are normal for millions of people around the country.
-Payment for water is falling and municipal debt is increasing, undermining service provision in many localities where there is simply not enough money for operation and maintenance.
-Pollution of rivers from failed municipal wastewater management and poorly regulated mining operations is widespread and growing.
-In 2018 the auditor-general and Parliament’s Standing Committee on Public Accounts reported the management of the Department of Water and Sanitation (DWS) had collapsed, with billions of rand of irregular expenditure, huge debts and failed projects. Many of these problems have been attributed to corruption.
Muller’s report was prompted by a series of investigations in the City Press about corruption in the water sector. “These revealed serious irregularities involving huge sums of money in DWS projects in Giyani, Limpopo.
Concerns grew when reports emerged about thousands of unpaid and unemployed trainees in the department’s multibillion-rand ‘War on Leaks’ project. “Then it emerged that nearly a billion rand had been committed to a computer project that wasn’t needed.
These cases, it is alleged, all involved former Water and Sanitation minister Nomvula Mokonyane and her associates.” Corruption was a problem before Mokonyane’s arrival with external investigations under way since 2012 – the SIU reported 28 criminal cases involving R50 million.
By the time she left, irregular expenditure was well over R4 billion “with new cases still being uncovered and the DWS is effectively bankrupt”.
Corruption in the water sector is far bigger than a few individuals and is “clearly systemic, involving many people at all levels, from plumbers and tanker drivers to mayors and ministers.
“Many private businesses joined in too, benefiting richly from corruption and in some cases, actively organising and encouraging it.” Corruption means that mining’s impact on water has not been properly regulated as in the awarding of mining licences, managing water pollution and water abstraction, “private interests frequently prevail over those of the communities, especially when public officials with the power to control these issues are complicit”. The looting strategies have included the capture of entire water sector organisations.
“Every facet of management has been exploited, including policy-making, procurement and operational and contract administration.” Oversight has been weakened. The decision to stop the production of the Blue, Green and No drop reports would appear to be a “deliberate contravention of the requirement under national water legislation to collect information on water services and water resources and provide that information to the public.
“Preparation of the National Water Resource Strategy, which is explicitly required by law to be produced every three years to explain how water security is to be sustained, is more than three years late.” Corruption is now “endemic, present and taken for granted”, across the South African water sector. “It’s simply regarded as what might be needed to get work done."
Some of the cases highlighted in the report:
-The Giyani bulk water project in Limpopo, ballooned from R502 million to R2.7 billion in a year.
The failed project aimed to provide clean running water to 55 villages in Giyani. “Local municipalities have been left with a dysfunctional system that they cannot afford to operate.
Giyani’s households are little better off than they were before. One unanswered question is where all the money went,” says the report.
-In the 1990s, the first phase of the Lesotho Highlands Project provided a “textbook case of corruption” in large public sector construction projects. “More recently, it has provided an insight into the way in which attempts to capture the management structures and gain control over procurement and contract management issues can disrupt and delay an important public project and put a substantial part of South Africa’s economy at risk.”
Former Water and Sanitation minister Nomvula Mokonyane actively sought to change the procurement requirements for the project. Lesotho Highlands Water Project Phase 2 is back on track for now. “However, even if procurement proceeds cleanly and smoothly, Mokonyane’s interventions have further delayed an already delayed project.
The result is that the region served by the Vaal system and Lesotho’s dams will be at risk of serious supply restrictions if there is a drought before 2026, the current optimistic project completion date. Already, new developments in major cities have been halted as a result. The potential economic impacts are significant.”
-In 2014, three people were killed during protests in Mothutlung, a small community lying between Brits and Ga-Rankuwa. “The community’s water supply failed, it was reported, because all three pumps serving the area had broken down.
In the interim, the Britsbased Madibeng municipality told residents that they would be served by tanker,” states the report.
“The residents refused to accept this. They alleged that the pumps had been deliberately sabotaged to enrich the private owners of water tankers, who had paid kickbacks to municipal officials to cut the supply.
“This allegation was credible. Mothutlung is not a distant rural village. It is close to major urban centres with reliable water supplies and well-developed maintenance facilities, just 10km from the municipal water treatment plan.”
-In Umlazi, eThekwini, residents protested because, they said, tanker drivers were demanding R200 to fill their house tanks after four weeks without water.
Their protest leaders also alleged that the supply cuts were deliberate. “We hear that officials are cutting our water supply so that we will get water delivered by tankers. We hear that the officials are benefiting from the water tankers,” said protest leader Nkanyiso Msomi.
-The Lekwa municipality in Mpumalanga province “provides an example of how infighting in a municipality, in this case between ANC factions, has had disastrous impacts on water supply. Standerton, Lekwa’s main town, is home to the main poultry processing plant of Astral Foods, the biggest in southern Africa – one of the largest employers in the area, with over 2 200 workers. But its future is under threat, owing to the lack of a reliable water supply, says the report.
“Disputes between different factions of the ruling party, essentially to capture control of the municipality’s limited resources, distracted attention from the critical job of maintaining and expanding the town’s water supply.
“Despite the company’s assistance, the municipality had failed to undertake even minimum maintenance. Even a court order compelling the municipality to provide the contracted volume of water had no impact.
As a consequence, the company has had to truck water to its installations at considerable expense. It is now considering shifting production elsewhere.”
Report recommendations:
-Designating the water sector as an “island of integrity”
-Ending impunity and instilling a culture of consequences
-Ensuring the appointment of honest, ethical and committed leaders to run key institutions
-Improving and strengthening procurement systems and practices
-Facilitating transparency in regulatory decisions
-Addressing broader environmental factors and supporting the media and civil society to uncover corrupt activities and pursue them until appropriate remedial action is taken.
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