It is now common knowledge that in 2022 the World Bank declared South Africa the most unequal country in the world, with race playing a determining factor in a society where 10% of the population owns more than 80% of the wealth.
Adding salt to the wound is the fact that the country has this year registered the highest unemployment rate in Africa, with around over 30 per cent (7.753 Million people) of its labour force unemployed and the hardest hit being 61% of young people between 15 and 24 years being jobless.
Adding to the country’s woes is a recently published report in the journal Nature Sustainability about a study focusing on Cape Town revealing that the rich are unequally utilising such a scarce resource as water on non-essential activities like their private swimming pools, irrigating their gardens and washing their posh cars. In contrast, the report showed that residents in the low-income group focused on basic requirements, such as drinking and hygiene.
The study revealed that the two wealthiest groups of residents were responsible for more than half of the city’s consumption, despite representing less than 15% of the population.
The said study comes at a critical point in South Africa where the country faces a myriad of challenges including a situation wherein most of the population does not have access to safe water facilities. This is an untenable situation in which, for example, water is a very unevenly distributed resource with millions of South Africans’ drinking water captured in reservoirs over 400km away.
As expected this lack of access to clean water in disadvantaged communities across South Africa usually results in many difficulties including issues with health, education, gender equity, and economic development.
Compounding the situation is the fact that South Africa is a water-scarce country receiving insufficient and unreliable rainfall. It is estimated that the country receives a mean annual precipitation of 497mm/year, almost 50 per cent less than the global average of 860mm/year.
This water scarcity also impacts the way water resources are distributed in the country.
Currently, 19% of the rural population lacks access to a reliable water supply and 33% do not have basic sanitation services. While rural citizens suffer the most, over 26% of all schools (urban or rural), and 45% of clinics, have no water access either.
Meanwhile, recent research by Earth.Org has revealed how both failing water infrastructure and the ever-increasing population have exacerbated the water crisis in South Africa, forcing its residents to adopt strict habits.
“Official mandates regarding significant reductions in water usage have led to overcrowded communal water taps, dangerous bore-holing, and the desperate acceptance of contaminated groundwater sources, all to combat a drought that has plagued the South African locale for over seven years,’ the research revealed.
The research also revealed that South Africa hasn’t had good rains for more than seven years and has had a sharp increase in water consumption from across sectors, be it residential, business, or other. So, compounding that with an ailing infrastructure leading to severe water leaks – almost 25-30% of the country’s water is being lost due to water leaks caused by failing infrastructure.
It is estimated that 70 million litres of treated, clean, drinkable water are lost daily as a result of the thousands upon thousands of leaks that characterise South Africa’s water piping system.
Fortunately, there has been a positive response on the part of the government, whereby an emergency response team has been established to specifically fix the water leaks.
Of concern is how this lack of access to clean water across South Africa will result in many difficulties including issues with health, education, gender equity, and economic development.
The water risk is also likely to result in several socio-political events that could well destabilise the local, provincial or national government. Such events could include:
- Civil unrest and instability: Water stress can spark civil unrest over water availability and quality or government water management practices.
- Water stress can lead to the emergence of a “black market” for water: In Zimbabwe and Kenya, a black market for water has emerged in part due to the government’s failure to extend water infrastructure into poor areas.
- These water black markets are unregulated, leaving vendors open to selling contaminated water and increasing the cost of water at their will.
- When mechanisms for resolving water conflict at the local level break down, water disputes can turn violent.
- This imbalance in the population-water resources equation has adverse impacts on domestic hygiene, public health, and the cost of domestic water. On the social side, water scarcity adversely impacts job opportunities, farm incomes, the credibility and reliability of agricultural exports, and the ability of the vulnerable to meet the cost of domestic water.
Economically, the adverse impact is displayed in the loss of production of goods, especially agricultural goods, and the loss of working hours because of the hardships society faces as a result of water scarcity.
On the other hand, the situation has the potential of undermining the National Development Plan’s defined milestones to achieve its 2030 objectives. These include:
- Ensuring that all South Africans have access to clean running water in their homes.
- Realising a food trade surplus, with one-third produced by small-scale farmers or households.
- Ensuring household food and nutrition security.
None of these goals will be met without secure access to water.
The government must come up with sustainable solutions to redress this untenable situation. In doing so the government must heed the argument that crises such as water scarcity in the country cannot be divorced from the socioeconomic inequalities plaguing the country.
To this end, it then becomes important that the government heeds to the finding in the Cape Town study revealing the fact that: “… water crises can be triggered by the unsustainable consumption patterns of scarce resources by privileged social groups.” And the fact that its findings are relevant to all societies with high-economic inequalities.
In doing so, the government must also take cognisance of the assertion following the study that socio-economic inequalities drive resource scarcity crises of today and tomorrow.
As the leader of the study and researcher at Uppsala University in Sweden, Elisa Savelli avers, as part of the solution to crises of the scarcity of critical resources like water, the government needs to “build policies that address inequality and the injustices, imbalances of consumption.’’
Such policies aimed at ending inequalities are important because -as history has taught us- inequalities undermine the positive relationship of solidarity among members of society – a crucial aspect of the common good. This solidarity and commitment to the common good makes up what Greek Philosopher Aristotle called” civic friendship”.
Inequalities undermine this “civic friendship”. It makes it likely for the small group at the top of the “food chain” to have little stake in what happens to the majority below them. Where there is “civic friendship” the concern for one another arises because all members of society recognise that they share a common fate.
Recognition of this fate makes them aware that the well-being of each citizen is intertwined with that of other members. This in turn generates mutual concern among the co-citizens leading them to support one another’s well-being.
Lekota is a political commentator and a former Sowetan Political Editor.