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This article unravels the notions of justice in statutory water law in Sub-Saharan Africa in general and South Africa in particular. These laws, which allocate and regulate water resources, are licence (or permit) systems. Three forms of injustices are identified for small-scale water users who typically encompass all poor water users: the reinforcement of the historical injustices by which colonial powers captured ownership of water resources and undermined customary water law; administrative discrimination as a result of governments' lack of capacity to license the large numbers of small-scale users; and discrimination of the smallest-scale users whose exemption from the obligation to apply for a licence relegates them to a second-class entitlement to water. Based on the texts and implementation experiences of the National Water Act (1998) and the pro-poor prioritisation rules in the National Water Resource Strategy-2 (2013), the authors propose the transformative legal tool of priority General Authorisations for black small-scale users to overcome these injustices. Via this tool all black small-scale users, including the poor, would obtain equal access to minimum quantities of water needed to progressively achieve constitutional rights to water, food, and non-discrimination, while the remaining water resources would be allocated to high-impact users through licences with strict and enforceable conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It has been suggested that the collective action needed for integrated water management at larger spatial scales could be more effective and sustainable if it were built, bottom-up, on the nested arrangements by which local communities have managed their water resources at homestead, plot, village and sub-catchment levels. The upscaling of such arrangements requires an understanding of why they emerge, how they function and how they are sustained. This paper presents a case study of local level water institutions in Bangalala village in the Makanya catchment, Tanzania. Unlike most research on collective action in which water asymmetry, inequality and heterogeneity are seen as risks to collective action, this study looked at how they dynamically interact and give rise to interdependencies between water users which facilitate coordination and collective action. The findings are confined to relatively small spatial and social scales, involving irrigators from one village. In such situations there may be inhibitions to unilateral action due to social and peer pressure. Spatial or social proximity may thus be a necessary condition for collective action in water asymmetrical situations to emerge. This points to the need for further research, namely to describe and analyse the dynamics engendered by water asymmetry, inequality and heterogeneity at larger spatial scales. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]