Last week, the Association of Water and Sanitation Institutions in SA (AWSISA) hosted its inaugural Global South Water and Sanitation Dialogue in the City of Ekurhuleni in Gauteng.
The dialogue, attended by 1,400 delegates from more than 10 countries, sought to address and develop solutions for water and sanitation challenges in developing countries like ours.
Various speakers, including deputy president Paul Mashatile, and the minister of water & sanitation, Pemmy Majodina, spoke eloquently about the importance of ensuring water security in a country that is increasingly confronted with water availability and sanitation safety challenges.
Like most South Africans, I take what politicians say with a pinch of salt, for I have lived long enough to know with certainty that what is said means nothing when there is no political will to implement and monitor.
SA does not lack good policies — we lack sustained implementation, monitoring and evaluation.
But more than this, a country is not built on policies alone, it is built on dedicated commitment to implementing them.
It is for this reason that I found AWISISA chair Ramatheu Monyokolo’s address the most compelling.
Monyokolo called for an action-oriented dialogue that would answer some of the most salient challenges faced by countries in the Global South.
He argued, correctly, that the success of the dialogue would be measured by outcomes geared towards action.
In my view, the most tangible outcome for SA would be for the government to establish special purpose vehicles (SPVs) for more municipalities, including Nelson Mandela Bay.
In the context of water infrastructure, an SPV is a legal entity, often a subsidiary, created to manage and finance specific water projects, such as revitalising water and sanitation services, by ring-fencing assets and liabilities.
It is a water utility that will be responsible for implementing, managing and carrying out the maintenance of water and sanitation service systems to ensure sustainable basic service delivery to residents, businesses, and industries.
One municipality in which an SPV has been established the Emfuleni local municipality in Gauteng — one of the worst performing in the country.
It experiences severe water insecurity due to poor water governance and municipal failures, and has often experienced significant financial challenges that have seen it hurled to courts by service providers.
An SPV was launched in Emfuleni as a pilot project to help manage and finance water infrastructure maintenance.
This intervention has allowed private sector expertise and funding to be brought in to stabilise and improve water supply networks.
What makes SPVs effective, for municipalities which fail to manage their water supply networks and to pay for the bulk water that they receive from water boards, is the relief that can provide.
This is done by ensuring sustained water access while simultaneously ensuring that the ring-fenced resources go into improving water infrastructure rather than other competing priorities of municipalities, as has been the case.
Despite having one of the most severe non-revenue water losses in SA, NMB has struggled to fund even the most basic water infrastructure such as repairing leaks.
Almost half of the water supplied to the municipality is not being billed to consumers.
This water is lost due to factors such as aging infrastructure, frequent burst pipes and illegal connections.
But even as the municipality has reallocated resources from other services to fund drought mitigation projects, failure to ring-fence resources for water and sanitation has meant that it continues to be water insecure and to have significant sanitation problems.
Establishing an SPV in municipalities such as NMB would go a long way in addressing water security challenges, which is crucial for rebuilding the municipality’s ailing economy.
The Herald
