Challenges of water management at local government municipal level in the Eastern Cape of South Africa

Abstract

Human beings depend on water not only for life itself but also for their economic wellbeing. Water resources play a cardinal role in the creation of everything that human beings produce. Post-apartheid South Africa is in the throes of incredible challenges. One of the more important challenges is access for all citizens to basic services. South Africa is doing this against a backdrop of strongly differential servicing that is its apartheid legacy, which has prompted many commentators to label South Africa a country of two worlds, more specifically, a developed world component and an impoverished developing world component. The challenge with respect to water is to ensure universal access in the context of the added hurdle of South Africa being a water-scarce country. The local municipalities of the Eastern Cape have been facing a number of challenges in the provision of clean, portable water to their communities. This has resulted in inadequate provision of water, meaning that not all communities have access to clean water 24 hours a day The overall objective for this study is to contribute to the body of knowledge available to the water sector about the management of sustainable water supply systems in municipalities, and determine the factors that have undermined the sustainability of water provision at a local government municipal level in the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa. In this research, the effectiveness of local governments, which act as water services authorities (WSA) and providers of water to the rural communities, is examined. To this end, a comprehensive literature review was conducted and data gathered to discover why there has been a failure in the provision of clean drinking water. The results of the research illustrate that institutional incapacity in rural municipalities and widespread poverty serve to undermine the sustainability of the local government sector and lead to breakdowns in services delivery. Measures are proposed that can be adopted to improve the current approaches of water supply in local municipalities.