Successes and failures of municipal water efficiency initiatives in South Africa contain valuable lessons for North American water purveyors.
The South African water supply and sanitation sector was crumbling during the late ’80s and early ’90s. Political corruption, international sanctions, and low gold prices meant a general diversion of funds away from central services like basic water. A history of misguided management decisions based on apartheid’s tenets had wreaked havoc with the natural landscape and water allocations. But as the apartheid state lurched toward its end, the democratic transition wasn’t smooth in the water sector.
Simon Forster, longtime government employee turned consultant, recalls the situation in the rural townships: “It looked very much like [a physical] drought. People were going along to puddles in the ground and entire villages were living off them, but [the real cause] was [that] the elaborate water systems were systematically collapsing, failing to supply, failing to collect revenues.”
It didn’t have to be that way. Forster observes that South Africa was known to have “had some of the best water engineers in the world. We were the envy of the world ... the South African water industry was driven by some very intelligent, very farsighted gentlemen.” However, the Department of Water Affairs and Forestry (DWAF) was at the bottom of the political “pecking order” because of its non-Afrikaner leadership and its practice of using catchments as water management units, rather than the political and racially defined homeland system.
But while the DWAF’s power was officially constrained, some farsighted water professionals began planning for the future. They recognized that the country would need massive capital investments to extend the supply infrastructure to the distant former townships. To help offset those costs, the sector would have to improve its water efficiency strategies, and by 1989 two water efficiency documents were being quietly developed. The political reality necessitated caution, however.
Forster laughs as he recalls that water sector plans had been written for post-apartheid South Africa: “[But] we didn’t say that in the preamble; we’d have got shot for that. But instead we had a quality document out for water supply and sanitation to developing communities. It was a euphemism.”
And so the South African water professionals waited for the political guard to change.
In 1994, South Africa did not collapse into rioting and retribution, as some had predicted. Instead, long queues snaked out from the country’s polling stations as millions of citizens voted for South Africa’s first democratically elected government. The new African National Congress (ANC) government was to lead a “country of two worlds”—a highly developed, affluent world populated mainly by its white citizens and a less developed world of informal urban settlements and rural townships created under the apartheid regime and populated primarily by black citizens. These worlds combined to make a country inundated by urgent problems: a flagging economy based on a defunct social system, a population with high expectations and eager for immediate change, an out-migration of the professional corps because of perceived security problems and economic uncertainty, and a set of environmental conditions that limited the development potential and undermined the majority’s quality of life.
Two situations catalyzed the ANC government’s efforts to give greater attention to water management. First, a series of droughts in the early ’90s reinforced the need for immediate action and better, more long-term decision-making. Second, the ANC was publicly committed to meeting its citizens’ basic needs. In addition to education, employment, housing, and health care, these basic needs included the provision of services to the 14 million people without access to safe drinking water and the 21 million that lacked reliable sanitation in the rural and informal settlements. South Africa’s water realities—heavy water use by the agriculture and the mining industries and rapidly escalating requirements because of population increases and urbanization—meant that decision-makers had to think about water management in new ways.
Water Legislation
South Africa’s water legislation, originally derived from the Dutch legal model, has undergone massive changes since 1994. The 1956 Water Act, which placed the priority on supply development and riparian rights, was unable to address the social, political, and environmental issues of post-apartheid South Africa. It was replaced with the new National Water Act in 1998.
The new act supported water demand management and conservation, which it defined as “the efficient use and saving of water, achieved through measures such as water saving devices, water-efficiency processes, water demand management and water rationing” (S.1 (1)(v)). In the National Water Act, water conservation is intended to “ensure that the nation’s water resources are protected, used, developed, conserved, managed and controlled in ways which take into account amongst other factors … [the promotion of] the efficient, sustainable and beneficial use of water in the public interest” (S.2 (d)). The act also contains the National Water Resource Strategy(NWRS), which aims to “set out the strategies, objectives, plans, guidelines and procedures of the Minister and institutional arrangements relating to the protection, use, development, conservation, management and control of water resources” as well as to outline the “principles relating to water conservation and demand management” (S.6 (1)(h)).
The Department of Water Affairs and Forestry
To implement its legislation, the federal government used the Department of Water Affairs and Forestry. In 1998, the DWAF became responsible for the development of policies, strategies, and projects to improve efficient use by water users in South Africa. A directorate of water-use efficiency, previously the directorate of water conservation, was established in 1998 to promote and ensure implementation of South African water demand management (WDM).
The DWAF also attempted to entrench support for the WDM initiative within its own staff. Hayley Rodkin, a director in the ministry, observes that the “outlook about conservation demand management [was] a relatively new arena in South Africa; so we don’t necessarily have institutionalized human resource capacities in all our regions, which means that we … carry a dual role.” The DWAF had to take responsibility for both water management and staff induction into the WDM approach. To put it bluntly, some sectors of the DWAF had to be “re-educated” not only to convey the necessary water efficiency knowledge and skills but also to entrench an entirely new way of thinking about water efficiency.
One of the DWAF’s first efforts was an ambitious, and highly visible, water efficiency campaign. According to Len Abrams, a World Bank expert on southern Africa water issues, the National Water Conservation Campaign focused on “changing the ethos of water management in South Africa away from a purely supply management paradigm to a demand management approach.” This program used the Hermanus municipality as its first example of what could be locally accomplished using water efficiency techniques.
Water Efficiency in Hermanus, South Africa
Background:
There have been limited water efficiency efforts in South Africa’s urban areas, but they’ve been predominantly short-term, technical responses to crisis situations, such as pressure management and leak detection, household or industrial retrofitting, and infrastructure upgrades. In contrast, the Hermanus campaign was distinct in its comprehensive approach, considered “cutting edge” in its day. It was also notable for its inclusion of “social” aspects of WDM and may exemplify the South African government’s commitment to water conservation and demand management—with all of its successes and controversies.
Situated along the coast of Western Cape province, one hour east of Cape Town, Hermanus has grown from a small fishing village into a tourist destination for vacationing South African urbanites and foreigners. Its population fluctuates from 22,000 off-season to a peak of 67,000 during the holiday period (December and January). According to the town engineer, James van der Linde, the regular population’s socioeconomic demographic consists of 10,000 that are considered “poor” and 6,000 “middle income” while the remaining 6,000 people are “affluent.”
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The municipality drew its water from the De Bos dam, built in 1976, and had an annual water allocation of 2.8 million cubic meters from the Department of Water Affairs and Forestry. Development projections had indicated that this volume would be sufficient until 2010, but by the early ’90s the municipality had already exceeded its annual water allocation. New estimates suggested that continued development would require almost twice as much. The municipality estimated its water use (percent of total) as shown in the Figure 1.
According to van der Linde, the concern was not that the municipality would “run out of water” but that its yearly supply was insufficient and the uncertainty left it vulnerable. This vulnerability was not surprising given that the water consumption by the wealthy residents was considered excessive and given the rapid rate of municipal growth and building (8,000 building plots available with only 3,000 plots supported by existing water supply numbers) and the influx of thousands of tourists, who were oblivious to water-use concerns. Simultaneously, the informal settlements surrounding Hermanus have also expanded as rapid social changes have caused people to migrate from rural areas to developed centers in search of employment.
The Hermanus municipal council and the town engineer decided to be proactive and explore their options. Increasing supply through groundwater extraction, desalination, and expanding the De Bos dam all had high capital costs and wouldn’t be supported by the DWAF. Therefore, in collaboration with the DWAF, the municipality began to develop a water efficiency strategy.
Program Initiatives
The Greater Hermanus Water Conservation Campaign (GHWCC) began officially in October 1996 with financial support from the DWAF. The program had 12 initiatives grouped into economic, technical, social/political, and ecological categories:
Economic
- An assurance of supply tariff
- An escalating block-rate tariff structure Technical
- Water loss management
- Retrofit program
- Pre-payment metering (security meter)
- Water-wise food production
Social/Political
- School water audits (designed as a series of student projects to gauge water use and loss within the school and to, ultimately, educate a generation of low-water users)
- Water-wise gardening
- National water regulations (adopted as local bylaws)
- Communication strategies
- Informative billing
Ecological
- Clearing invasive alien plants in selected catchments (“Working for Water” project)
The campaign’s overarching objective was to change the concept of water management away from supply management to demand management. This effort was understood by the program developers as not merely the purview of water professionals but also the responsibility of every citizen.
Initial Results
After the first four months, and with only six of the 12 initiatives in place, the Greater Hermanus Water Conservation Program (GHWCP) found that the consumption, calculated per erf [an erf (plural: erven) is considered to be a standard garden plot size, and is approximately 0.5 acre, or 0.2 hectare], was significant. In 1997, the municipality was servicing 9,000 erven, an increase over the average of 8,233 between the 1993 to 1996 period. Based on those figures, per plot, water consumption fell from 1,410 liters per day for 1993 to 1996 to 960 liters per day for 1996 to 1997, a decrease of 32.2% (Author unknown 1997).
This consumption decline was not sustained over the project duration. However, water usage remained below the pre-project levels. After one year (compared to the baseline of the previous three years), there was a 20% increase in revenue and a 96% citizen approval rating (van der Linde and Buckle 2001). The households’ using between 25 and 50 kiloliters month saw their bills decrease.
Overall, the municipality increased its revenue to over 1.5 million rand (approximately $235,000 Canadian at 2006 rates). The extra income addresses the unaccounted-for water rates (i.e., leakage), the retrofit program, and other, somewhat misguided, infrastructure expansions. Van der Linde (2004) estimated that while Hermanus’s water supply issues were not completely resolved, the WDM program had delayed additional supply expansion by approximately seven years.
Other benefits of the campaign included improved access to water and supply assurance, job creation and skill training through the Working for Water program that eventually employed 120 low-income residents (Author unknown 1997), children’s environmental education, growth of community awareness, and attitudinal changes related to water issues (van der Linde 2004). The GHWCC also illustrated that, with a commitment to communication between the municipality and the consumer, regular feedback on water choices would promote conservation and higher levels of cooperation.
Critics and Problems
The Greater Hermanus Water Conservation Campaign is not without its critics. Residential support for the campaign, determined initially to be 97%, with 2% undecided, decreased as the water regulations were strictly enforced (McQueen and Pieters 1998). This decrease became particularly evident after a series of “wet’’ years altered the public’s perception of water scarcity and the need for such comprehensive water conservation efforts. In some cases, municipal councilors were in the “hot seat,” as the issues related to water conservation were politicized during a local election. The council’s later decisions, which undermined the GHWCC, were harshly, and publicly, criticized by the minister of water affairs (Editorial 2000).
Within the management structure itself, there were ongoing tensions between the treasury and the engineering departments as they struggled to find a compromise between allocating additional revenues to a central fund and allocating them to sustain water conservation efforts. This tension eventually coalesced as a contributing factor to the project’s end: The treasury made a unilateral decision to spend the funds accumulated by the WDM project. The funds had been earmarked for the ongoing communication campaign, to improve the infrastructure within the informal settlements and to continue the Working for Water employment program.
However, the decision was made to extend a water pipeline to Vermont, a very wealthy, and white, Hermanus neighborhood. Unsurprisingly, this decision did little to endear the WDM campaign or its well-recognized local practitioner and champion to the community. It also seriously undermined the campaign’s perceived intentions and legitimacy.
The treasury’s decision reinforced the more serious criticism that the GHWCC actually exacerbated the socioeconomic gaps between low-income residents (some of whom had difficulty paying the charges above the free block and had leaky or insecure connections) and visiting holidaymakers or the more financially secure local people. People in some of the low-income households also felt that the low block tariffs for minimal use were still too expensive and that the charges themselves ran counter to their basic rights to water under the new South African water law.
Finally, the challenges of managing an extensive and multifaceted campaign were substantial because the human resources weren’t available. The GHWCC was, according to van der Linde, just a “two-man team” for its duration. As of 2004, after the loss of the communication element, the conservation campaign, significantly less comprehensive than the original strategy, was being solely championed and managed by van der Linde while the Hermanus town council and the DWAF no longer provided support.
Lessons for North American Water Efficiency Efforts
This South African story highlights the complexity associated with a community-based water conservation and demand management project. The Hermanus case had many successes including the reduced consumption numbers, the delayed infrastructure construction, the economic and social progress through the Working for Water project, the extensive communication campaign, and the international recognition. Even during its “slump,” according to van der Linde, the program was still making a 25% profit from its water revenues.
Problems, however, remained: The social inequity issues were not adequately addressed while the profits made by the WDM program were continuing to be deposited into the municipal general accounts. These funds remained unavailable to program operations or program expansion, including a much needed communications campaign for the new areas of the recently amalgamated municipality.
The difficulties experienced by Hermanus, and its lone program champion without access to a functioning social network, can provide valuable lessons for other practitioners and municipalities. Van der Linde was excluded from any active WDM community after the campaign’s very public collapse. He was, in some ways, considered a pariah within his own community. The affluent residents and business community had been alienated because van der Linde had recommended building restrictions and raised the water tariff. In the informal settlement, residents resented his enforcement of the water payments. Within the municipal government, some suspected residual animus over the Vermont pipeline decision and the hostile public coverage in the local newspapers. So why did van der Linde continue to push, however weakened, for WDM in his municipality? He says, “I think I like challenge, in a sense. Somewhere I have an article that says, “If you want a tap on the shoulder, don’t go into demand management because no one is going to say thanks to you,’ … [but] some things you just do without a reward.”
Status of WDM in South Africa
This brief synopsis cannot do justice to the complexity and the dynamic nature of the South African water sector. Issues of race, AIDS, desperate poverty, and ongoing inequity, all partial legacies of apartheid, have been only alluded to or omitted completely. These omissions are for the sake of brevity but the story is admittedly incomplete without acknowledgement of these components. Lingering racial issues contribute to organizational cultures and tensions: Rapid turnover occurs as some individuals climb to previously unreachable professional heights, while other individuals are “retrenched” [fired] under diversity obligations. The AIDS scourge complicates matters further, as civil servants and other experts from local to national levels fall ill at alarming rates.
Abrams (1995) notes, as previously mentioned, that the National Water Conservation Campaign’s main focus was on “changing the ethos of water management in South Africa away from a purely supply management paradigm to a demand management approach.” This focus seems to have worked, at least on paper. The government’s efforts to promote its water conservation and efficiency agenda are unprecedented in the country, across Africa, and likely across much of the world, according to the former director of water conservation. The South African experts interviewed for this article are extremely proud of the significant legislative changes that have been accomplished in a decade.
But while acknowledging these legislative successes, it must be recognized that problems continue to exist on many levels. Mwendera et al. (2003) concludes, “It is not sufficient to know how to implement WDM. One needs to know what requires implementation, when to implement it, how to select and motivate the most appropriate parties to implement it ...” A variety of explanations exists for this lack of progress. Hazelton (2004) says, “Perhaps one of the most important [reasons why WDM is not being fully implemented] is that neither the national politicians nor DWAF know where to begin because of the overwhelming demands on their time and resources.” Addressing these concerns will be the next significant challenge to realizing the benefits of water efficiency strategies.