Water and Sanitation fix — Minister Majodina highlights municipal support, cleaning up Vaal River

5 Aug 2024

In her first briefing as the new Minister of Water and Sanitation, Pemmy Majodina acknowledged the decline in water quality over the past decade and emphasised new measures to ensure municipalities met national standards.

‘We are building on a good foundation that was put in place by my predecessor, honourable [Senzo] Mchunu. We are not going to change things, we are not in competition here, there’s only one government,” said Minister of Water and Sanitation Pemmy Majodina on Monday, 5 July 2024.

In her first media briefing as Minister of the Department of Water and Sanitation (DWS), under the new Government of National Unity, Majodina outlined the department’s strategic efforts to address water pollution in the Vaal River and support municipalities in improving water and sanitation services.

When Majodina was announced as the new DWS minister a month ago, Daily Maverick reported that Professor Anja du Plessis, a water management expert at Unisa, was sad to see Mchunu moved to a different portfolio. She acknowledged the positive strides Mchunu and his team had made, including the revival of the Blue, Green, and No Drop reports and amendments to water-related acts.

Speaking at the Birchwood Hotel in Boksburg on Monday, Majodina acknowledged that those reports, issued by the department in December 2023, indicated that the quality and reliability of municipal water and sanitation services had deteriorated markedly over the past 10 years.

“For example, the Blue Drop report found that the percentage of water supply systems with poor or bad microbiological water quality compliance (ie water that is not safe to drink) increased from 5% in 2014 to 46% in 2023, resulting in increased risk of water-borne diseases,” she said.

Cleaning up the Vaal

Majodina highlighted the ongoing efforts to address pollution in the Vaal system, a critical water source for millions of South Africans.

Ongoing sewage spills into the Vaal River, predominantly from the Emfuleni Municipal wastewater treatment system, have affected human and animal health, the environment and ecology. The 2022 Green Drop Report found that 40% of wastewater treatment systems were in a critical state of performance, compared with 30% in 2013.

Majodina said that in Emfuleni Municipality, her department will continue with the Section 63 (of the Water Services Act) Intervention through Rand Water to address sewage pollution in the Vaal.

“Good progress has been made in refurbishing and repairing sewage pump stations, unblocking sewer lines, repairing collapsed sewer lines, as well as repairing and refurbishing wastewater treatment works,” said Majodina.

“This has substantially reduced sewage pollution in residential areas in Emfuleni.”

She said the main remaining work was to upgrade the capacity of the major wastewater treatment works in the area, and these projects were currently in the procurement phase.

‘Intervening to support’ municipalities

“Dysfunctional municipal wastewater systems are resulting in pollution of communities, rivers and the environment, leading to intolerable living conditions and increased risk of diseases such as cholera,” Majodina said.

She emphasised that the provision of local water and sanitation services lay with municipalities, saying that, “The national Department cannot do maintenance or repairs to municipal infrastructure on behalf of a municipality.”

After being inundated with calls about local-level problems in her first month in office, Majodina said the DWS would launch community outreach programmes to correct this misunderstanding and to encourage communities and community leaders to hold their municipalities accountable.

She explained that the role of the DWS was to oversee water resource management, set national standards and importantly, support municipalities.

“When we make interventions to municipalities, we are intervening to support,” said Majodina. “We support municipalities because we want them to comply [to minimal norms and standards].”

New measures for accountability

Despite the high level of support the DWS provides to municipalities, Majodina said, “In general municipal water and sanitation services continue to decline.”

To address this, she said the DWS would soon present the Water Services Amendment Bill to Cabinet for approval to be submitted to Parliament.

The Amendment Bill would introduce an operating licence system so that water services authorities could ensure water services providers had a minimum level of capability that met national norms and standards.

“The amendments propose that this should be done through the introduction of an operating licence requirement for water services providers, to ensure that they have a minimum level of competency,” said Majodina.

“The Bill will also introduce measures to enable the national department to take regulatory action against municipalities which do not comply with national minimum norms and standards for water services.”

Financial sustainability

The financial viability of the water sector remains a pressing issue, with municipalities owing water boards R21.3-billion as of May 2024. This debt threatens the water sector’s financial health. Majodina reiterated that apart from national grants, the water sector had to be self-financing through water sales revenues. The Bill amendments will also allow the DWS to ensure municipalities enforce bylaws against local polluters.

“We want to be partners with municipalities to ensure our water boards don’t collapse,” Majodina said, highlighting the need for a clear payment plan.

“Because if you don’t maintain, you will experience a collapse of infrastructure.”

Unblocking projects

Since 1994, the DWS has built 18 new dams, with 15 more major projects worth more than R100-billion in various stages of implementation.

“Many of these projects were delayed for a long period of time, but they have now all been unblocked, and it will be a priority for us to ensure that they are all implemented expeditiously,” she said.

Most of these projects are financed off-budget, through raising money in the financial markets. Majodina explained that to enable the DWS to increase this fund-raising, the previous Parliament passed the National Water Resource Infrastructure Agency (NWRIA) Bill, which is now awaiting the signature of the President.

Notable projects include the new R26-billion uMkhomazi Dam to provide urgently needed additional water to eThekwini and surrounding areas in KwaZulu-Natal, and the new Polihali Dam – which forms part of the R42-billion second phase of the Lesotho Highlands Water Project – to provide water to Gauteng and parts of the Free State, Mpumalanga, North West and Northern Cape provinces.

Time to act

Professor du Plessis told Daily Maverick that what was said at the briefing was nothing experts hadn’t continuously highlighted over the past couple of decades.

“We need to actually start addressing issues such as increased pollution of both surface and groundwater sources, raw sewage running down streets as well as into our scarce water resources, neglected water infrastructure, theft and vandalism of water infrastructure, dysfunctional municipalities, poor water management as well as change our water use behaviours and attitudes,” said du Plessis.

“Words need to become actual actions to try and ensure water security within the country. We cannot afford to keep on talking with no real actual changes on the ground.” DM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=REeWvTRUpMk

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