New water plan, old problem: Government still evades responsibility

The Presidency’s newly released National Water Action Plan confirms what communities, water experts and oversight institutions have been saying for years: South Africa’s water crisis is rooted in failing municipalities, neglected infrastructure, poor finances and a lack of accountability. According to AfriForum, the plan’s central weakness is that it repackages known solutions without proving that government is actually willing to enforce them.

President Cyril Ramaphosa recently released the plan after a meeting of the National Water Crisis Committee, also known as Watercom. The plan proposes interventions such as ring-fencing municipal water revenue, reducing water losses, licensing water service providers, increasing infrastructure investment, expanding private sector participation and acting against corruption and criminality in the water sector.

AfriForum argues that the existing legal framework already allows well-managed municipalities to deliver reliable water and sanitation services. Some municipalities are even able to maintain infrastructure, protect revenue and appoint competent technical staff within the current system. This shows that municipal water failures are not primarily caused by an absence of laws or plans, but by poor implementation, a lack of consequence management and political unwillingness to act against failing institutions.

The National Water Action Plan identifies the current municipal delivery model as a root cause of the crisis. AfriForum warns that this framing risks shifting attention away from years of mismanagement, neglect and lack of accountability at municipal level.

“Separating the roles of water services authorities and water services providers, as the plan suggest, may help where municipalities are incapable of delivering services themselves. However, it will not solve the crisis if the same governance failures, political interference, poor procurement practices and absence of consequences are simply transferred into a new structure,” says Lambert de Klerk, AfriForum’s Manager for Environmental Affairs.

“The same applies to private sector participation. Private expertise and funding can play a positive role in restoring water services, especially where municipalities lack technical capacity. However, without transparent procurement, enforceable performance standards and real accountability, public-private partnerships could become another opportunity for rent-seeking rather than an actual solution for communities.”

According to De Klerk, the plan’s own non-revenue water target illustrates the problem. Government records that municipalities lose or fail to account for almost half of the water pumped through their systems. Yet the plan aims to reduce this figure only to 39,5% by 2031. AfriForum says such a target confirms the scale of the crisis but does not reflect the urgency experienced by communities living with dry taps, sewage pollution and unreliable water supply.

The President’s comparison between the water crisis and government’s response to load shedding should also be treated with caution. The end of regular load shedding was not only facilitated by Eskom, but also the result of reduced demand, increased private self-generation and households and businesses spending their own money on solar energy. Ageing infrastructure and deep institutional weaknesses at Eskom have not disappeared. If this is the model for water, South Africans should expect another crisis to be poorly managed rather than properly solved at its source.

AfriForum further points out that government has long had legal mechanisms to intervene where municipalities fail to meet their obligations. The real test is therefore not whether Watercom can produce another plan, but whether national government will use existing powers to hold municipalities, municipal managers and politicians accountable in their personal capacities so as not to burden taxpayers further.

The Auditor-General of South Africa has already identified inadequate accountability as well as poor maintenance, planning and coordination as central causes of the water crisis. AfriForum’s own 2025 Water Quality Watch Report found that 86% of sewage treatment plants tested by the organisation discharged polluted effluent into water resources at the time of sampling.

“South Africa does not have a shortage of plans to tackle the water crisis, but rather a lack of accountability. The same government that allowed municipal water systems to decay now promises to hold those municipalities accountable. Unless national government is willing to truly act against failing municipalities and officials, even where those failures sit within the governing party’s own structures, the National Water Action Plan will become another document that describes the crisis without solving it,” says De Klerk.

AfriForum will study the National Water Action Plan in detail, continue monitoring the quality of drinking water and wastewater through its Water Quality Watch project, and keep pressing government for measurable implementation.