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South Africa's legally binding National Water Resource Strategy specifies a people-oriented prioritization for the equitable allocation of the nation's public trust of surface and groundwater resources. This article analyses how the Inkomati–Usuthu Catchment Management Agency seeks to operationalize the three highest priorities in the Sabie Sub Catchment: the Basic Human Needs Reserve for domestic and constitutionally based productive water uses; customary water tenure in former homelands prioritized over the upstream commercial forestry and large-scale farming and the downstream Kruger National Park; and priority General Authorizations overcoming administrative injustices of current licensing. These highest priorities imply curtailment of the lowest priority, high-impact economic uses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During apartheid, South Africa formalized legal pluralism as territorial and institutional segregation that legitimized the white minority's grab of most land, water and mineral resources. In the homelands on the remaining 13% of the country, allied tribal chiefs controlled second-class customary land and water rights. Under the democratic dispensation, the new Constitution (1996) and National Water Act (1998) aim at redressing this racial discrimination. However, these goals have not been achieved. Building on literature, field research and ongoing policy and legal debates, this paper traces causes for this failure and examines whether and how a different interpretation of statutory law can decolonize past legal pluralism. A main cause of this failure is the continued power by white large-scale water users and their consultants and lawyers. Monopolizing technical and legal knowledge, they fiercely defend apartheid era's Existing Lawful Uses by 1998 and relatively easily obtain administrative licences for post-1998 water uptake, while claiming excessive monetary values of entitlements to water resources that the state, with tax payers, as custodian holds. In contrast, black water users' pre-1998 Existing Lawful Uses have not been defined as yet and burdensome licences processes for new water uptake are inaccessible to the many smaller-scale black water users. The paper concludes that, in former homelands, the legal status of living customary water tenure should be elevated and protected. Inclusive facilitated processes can further clarify the "sharing in" of water resources flowing over or under the communities' territories inside the boundaries of former homelands, also to enable gradual alignment with constitutional rights. However, in "sharing out" these water resources with powerful third parties, including foreign investors, customary water tenure should be fully protected. As a core minimum of highest priority water resource rights across the country, the current Basic Human Needs Reserve should include all water-related constitutional rights, so also water for sufficient food, and be implemented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the rapid extension of public service delivery since the end of Apartheid, many rural citizens in South Africa still rely on their own initiatives and infrastructure to access water. They construct, improve, operate and maintain infrastructure of different complexities, from individual wells to complex collectively owned water schemes. While most of these schemes operate without legal recognition, they provide essential services to many households. In this article we will first provide an overview of the growing international body of literature describing self-supply as an alternative pathway for public service delivery. We then take a historical perspective on the role of communities and self-supply in South Africa and describe the emergence of six collectively owned, gravity-fed, piped schemes in Tshakhuma, Limpopo Province. We describe and compare these systems using key characteristics like resource access, investment, construction, operation, maintenance and institutional governance. We further assess their performance with regard to coverage, service level, reliability, governance structure, accountability and water quality. We do so because we are convinced that lessons learned from studying such schemes as locally adapted prototypes have the potential to improve public approaches to service delivery. The described cases show the willingness of community members to engage with service delivery and their ability to provide services in cases where the state has failed. The assessment also highlights problematic aspects of self-supply related to a lack of accountability, technical expertise and the exclusion of disadvantaged community members. By describing and assessing the performance of rural self-supply schemes, we aim to recognize, study and learn from such schemes. We consequently do not conclude this article by providing answers, but by raising some pertinent, policy-relevant questions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article traces the history of integrated water resources management (IWRM) in South Africa since the 1970s. It examines IWRM according to its three common pillars, which are also reflected in South Africa's National Water Act: economic efficiency, environmental sustainability, and equity. The article highlights how the principles of economic efficiency and the environment as a user in its own right emerged under apartheid, while equity was only included in the post-1994 water policies, with evolving influence on the other two principles. In 2013, the Department of Water Affairs overcame the widely documented flaws of IWRM by adopting developmental water management as its water resource management approach, aligning with the political and socio-economic goals of South Africa's democratic developmental state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Emerging approaches to water resources development and management typically highlight equity and productivity as two main objectives. In the context of integrated water resources management within a river basin, managers and stakeholders often need a comparative assessment of different options for water augmentation and/or allocation. Pitting such options against predefined objectives, such as equity and productivity, requires an assessment of the effects that available options will have on these objectives. Available documentation indicates that not only does the interpretation of such objectives vary widely, but also the available methods for assessing equity and productivity run into significant limitations in the availability of adequate data. This limitation has largely kept decision makers from gaining a comprehensive overview of equity and productivity scenarios, whether within or across sectors, that could facilitate better-informed decisions. To address this methodological gap, this article scrutinizes different notions associated with equity and water productivity, and limitations in prevalent assessment methods with the view to develop and demonstrate pragmatic methodologies for assessing equity and productivity in data-scarce contexts. The discussion and findings are based on a review of relevant literature and empirical and consultative research work in the Olifants River basin in South Africa. The demonstrated methodologies for assessing equity and productivity, besides being useful in data-scarce contexts, are insightful for initiating several policy measures and also for exploring the relationship between equity and water productivity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the changes in water law in South Africa since the new dispensation. The focus is on the poverty dimensions of the early experiences of implementation of one of the components of the National Water Act: the establishment of Catchment Management Agencies (CMAs). From a diversity of recent experiences in decentralizing integrated water resources management, key areas emerge where future actions by the government are crucial to establish pro-poor, developmental CMAs. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This article discusses ways in which the South African Government and grassroots organizations envisage and implement democracy achieved since 1994 in the field of water resources management. The focus is on the democratic, political and economic freedom and equality in resource rights for poor black women, who are central to poverty eradication. While the new water policy and law provide an enabling framework for achieving these goals, implementation on the ground encounters both new opportunities and constraints. This is illustrated by several cases of establishing South Africa's new water management institutions: catchment management agencies and water user associations. The important nexus between state-led democratization of water resources management and bottom-up grassroots movements is also discussed. The article concludes that the Government's affirmative and targeted intervention is indispensable for redressing gender inequalities and eradicating poverty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Through investigating the reactions of commercial farmers to land and water reforms in the Trichardtsdal-Ofcolaco area, Limpopo Province, Olifants Basin, South Africa, from 1997 to 2006, it is shown that water claims are key to land redistribution processes, and that commercial farmers make strategic use of arguments for nature conservation and ecological stewardship to defend their claims to water. Given these observations, caution is warranted with respect to the implementation of land and water reforms as separate policy packages; it may be more effective to design water and conservation policies as an integral part of land reform programmes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]