Johannesburg Struggles to Supply Water and Sanitation

By Alexandru R. Savulescu

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa, September 2, 2002 (ENS) - As in many cities in the developing world, access to water is not an issue in Johannesburg. Distribution is.

One hundred percent of the 3.5 million people living in the Greater Johannesburg metropolis have access to drinking water, according to Pierre-Etienne Segre, CEO of the Johannesburg Water Management Company (Jowam).

Water tower in Johannesburg on a street lined with jacaranda trees in bloom (Photo courtesy City of Johannesburg)

There is no problem of water supply in Johannesburg, as good quality water is provided by Rand Water in sufficient quantity. But there is a problem of distribution. It is the problem of sharing between rich and poor areas.

For historical reasons, the rich areas, such as Sandton where the World Summit on Sustainable Development is meeting, and where one-third of Johannesburg residents live, have full access to high quality water services.

The poor areas, such as the Orange Farm in the south, or Alexandra in the east, where the other two-thirds of the people live, have access to only limited water services. Sometimes cisterns are filled just once a day, and they are not centrally located but are placed at the area borders.

Marchers in Sandton on Saturday (Photo courtesy City of Johannesburg)

"Our task is to bridge the water divide," says Segre.

On the water services front, Johannesburg Water is replacing illegal yard standpipe connections with prepaid meters, ensuring for all township residents access to a monthly allocation of 6,000 litres (1,585 gallons) of free water.

The lifeline service of free water to those who consume less than six kilolitres per month is part of a national government water strategy, prompted in part by the outbreak of cholera in KwaZulu-Natal. The epidemic in 2001 began when a small local authority began charging for tap water that had previously been free. Local residents who could not afford the 50 rand (US$5) per month charge for electricity began using local streams for both water supplies and sewage disposal.

Water experts estimate that most poor people use less than six kilolitres per month. In Johannesburg, the lifeline will cost the city 80 million rand (US$8 million) per year.

But water comes at an increasingly high price. On July 1, Rand Water imposed an increase of nine percent in the price at which it supplies purified water to municipalities. The increase in the cost of purified tap water from Rand Water affects every municipality in Gauteng, including the Metropolitan councils of Johannesburg, Tshwane and Emfuleni. These municipalities set the retail price of water to consumers.

Rand Water Chief Executive Simo Lushaba said, “It is inevitable that the cost of water will increase because it is a scarce resource." He urged Johannesburg residents in all areas to conserve water.

An even more challenging task for Jowam is providing adequate sanitation. Sanitation, provided to 100 percent of the residents in rich areas, is an exception in poor areas. On average, only 50 percent of the population has access to sanitation, says Segre.

Johannesburg Water is now working to install ventilated pit latrines, also called VIPs, in poor neighborhoods. The VIPs provide a more hygienic and safe alternative to existing chemical toilets.

However, providing flushing water toilets to townships also calls for cleaning the used water. Due to the lack of any primary sewage network, this is only possible through new sewage works, says Segre. These are community based alternative sewer systems that function on the same principle as the conventional water borne system.

The project makes use of local labor during the construction phase to help alleviate an unemployment rate in the townships that can be as high as 60 percent, says Segre. It also establishes a community information sharing system to empower residents on how the new system works, and how to repair minor problems should they occur.

Boy in Soweto, a poor area that is part of metropolitan Johannesburg (Photo credit unknown)

"It was actually the same in Europe," he said, "but it took probably 100 years or 200 years for Europe to do that. Here, in South Africa I think it is possible to do it in 10 or 12 years."

Poverty may be not as poignant in Europe as it is in South Africa, but access to sanitation is still lacking in certain parts of Europe as well.

In Romania, for example, a former Communist country from the southeastern part of the continent, while access to water is not a problem, more than 10 percent of urban households, and the vast majority of rural households do not yet have access to sanitation.

{Alexandru R. Savulescu is an environmental journalist who makes his home in Bucharest, Romania.}