DWS pushing race-based water reforms without fixing real barriers

AfriForum says the Department of Water and Sanitation is pushing ahead with race-based water reservation and expanded curtailment powers in the National Water Amendment Bill, 2026, despite failing to address the real structural barriers to water access and despite serious concerns raised during public participation on the 2023 draft bill remaining fundamentally unresolved.

This follows the Department’s presentation to the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Water and Sanitation on the National Water Amendment Bill on 19 May. According to AfriForum, the Department appears determined to push ahead with sweeping amendments based on untested assumptions while critical public comments have seemingly been ignored. AfriForum further notes that it has received no meaningful feedback from the Department on its submissions made in January 2024.

A central concern is the Department’s assertion to parliament that Existing Lawful Use (“ELU”) water entitlements are “normally hoarded” and withdrawn from economic use.

“The Department has not publicly demonstrated the factual basis for these claims,” says Marais de Vaal, AfriForum’s Advisor for Environmental Affairs. “There appears to be no quantified evidence showing the actual extent of alleged hoarding, the volume of water supposedly withheld from productive use or the degree to which it is preventing transformation. Yet these assumptions are now being used to justify far-reaching curtailment and reallocation powers.”

AfriForum points out that the Department’s own parliamentary presentation acknowledges that approximately 50% of Existing Lawful Uses have still not been verified nationwide, while only 75% of irrigation boards have been transformed into Water User Associations nearly three decades after the National Water Act came into operation.

“The proposed legislation is trying to force transformation while leaving the actual structural barriers largely untouched,” says De Vaal. “The Department itself acknowledges that the real obstacles include land tenure, financing, infrastructure, training, licensing support, and incomplete verification of existing rights. Instead of directly addressing those bottlenecks, the Bill shifts increasingly toward race-based reservation mechanisms and stronger state control over existing entitlements.”

AfriForum further argues that the Department’s claim that unused ELUs are withholding water from productive use is logically inconsistent. The same problem will arise where race-based reserved allocations remain unutilised in an environment where the underlying structural barriers have not been resolved. In such a scenario, water may simply remain unused while productive users are excluded from access, leaving everyone worse off.

The Department’s treatment of existing lawful users as the primary obstacle to transformation, despite evidence that this is not the true bottleneck, means that race-based ideology overrides rational policymaking. This will ultimately prevent meaningful participation in the water economy.

AfriForum urges parliament to properly interrogate the Department’s assumptions before adopting amendments that may have severe consequences for agriculture, food security, investment confidence, and the rule of law.