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This paper is based on a PhD study undertaken in Uganda between 201 1 and 2012 that examined how governance dynamics in policy and institutional frameworks designed to bestow responsibility for overall operation and maintenance of rural point-water facilities may serve to disable community capacity to manage and ultimately sustain established water infrastructure and services. Theoretical and empirical literature agrees that functional communitybased water management (CBWM) systems are capable of transcending socialcultural, financing or technology barriers to sustainable and equitable access to safe drinking water. However, the effectiveness of these structures remains contextual and dependent on the institutional governance dynamics at macro, meso and micro levels of service delivery. In extending the debate about rural safe water service provision in resource-poor settings, this paper examines key governance dynamics that disable CBWM systems from leveraging sustainability of rural domestic water supply infrastructure and services. The paper questions the extent to which duty-bound policy and programme actors at central and local levels of service delivery consciously support or enable policy-prescribed CBWM systems as a necessary condition for functional sustainability of rural improved point-water facilities.