WaterCAN says water mafias will outlast SONA without deadlines, audits and prosecutions

By Charmaine Ndlela

South Africa’s water crisis will remain fertile ground for water mafias and collapsing infrastructure unless President Cyril Ramaphosa backs his State of the Nation (SONA) pledges with deadlines, transparent reporting and enforcement, civil society group WaterCAN said on Friday.

During his address on Thursday night, Ramaphosa said the ministers of water and sanitation and cooperative governance had been deployed to Johannesburg to attend to the weeks-long water outages in parts of the city.

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“There is no silver bullet to address this challenge, which has its roots in systemic failures and many years of neglecting infrastructure,” he said.

“To ensure water security in the long term, we are building new dams and upgrading existing infrastructure. We have committed more than R156 billion in public funding for water and sanitation infrastructure over the next three years,” he said.

WaterCAN executive