Water Wheel Sept/Oct 2023: Water And Legislation

Abstract

Cover feature Reflecting on 25 years of the National Water Act of – what has been achieved? The National Water Act of 1998 was promulgated 25 years ago, in that time of tremendous optimism and possibility of democratic South Africa. The changes were swift and the challenges were monumental. The 1997 Water Services Act and the National Water Act of 1998 were some of the first sectoral translations into law of the spirit of the new Constitution, expected to reverse the vast inequalities of more than three centuries of colonisation and apartheid. Until then, water and land were tools to enforce privilege to the descendants of white settlers. Under colonial and apartheid regimes, whoever owned the land, owned the water, and, as a range of laws systematically dispossessed black people of their land over centuries, by the dawn of democracy, 1,2% of the population controlled 95% of the water used in rural areas, and the economic benefits that came with using it. The new Acts had to undo all of that, and fast, to extend the benefits to all citizens of the land.

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