Fighting for Human Right to Water in South Africa
Narrator: How far is meeting the basic need for water, a basic human right.
In some urban areas of South Africa, being poor can literally mean
being cutoff from a lifeline supply of water, people are coming to
see this as a denial of the most basic human right, the right to life.
This is the frontline of the unreported war over water, security
guards and armed police turn up to cutoff residence that can't pay.
The residences accuse them of being heavy handed.
Jooma Moola: We are getting hurt. We don’t know why. We are not criminals.
Why must the protection services come with guns like they're
coming for a war here? Yeah, you look like criminals. Do you look
like criminals? I don’t think so. We are humans. We live here. We
are not enemies. There’s no respect about our incomes. These are
flats, the low-income people.
Narrator: Chatsworth is a township outside Durban housing over 300,000
people. The industries this community used to depend on closed
down, so people are now finding almost impossible to get work.
They're also coming into conflict with the authorities over their
right of access to water.
Christina Manqele is a single mother struggling to bring up her
own four children plus three others in her care, the tiny two-room
flat. After 12 years of service for the same employer, Christina
found herself without a job and seriously ill needing major surgery.
She began to fall behind in her water, electricity and rent payments
to the point where she now owes the council roughly US$2,000.00.
In January 2000, the water was cutoff.
Christina Manqele: That man came to close the water. I haven’t got water. After that, I
haven’t got food too and then I'm thinking one way to sell my
body. I'm thinking food again. I can't go there to prostitute myself;
I’m old. All night I can't sleep and my blood pressure is high. I'm
thinking for the people’s life, I see it, people now, -- she got water,
she got food, what about me? Why did God punish me? I'm asking
all these questions now. What's wrong now? What am I doing?
Narrator: Having tested the generosity of her poverty-stricken neighbors,
Christina resorted to using water from a nearby polluted stream.
An independent analysis found this water contains high counts of
bacterial from untreated sewage. It cause waterborne diseases such
as cholera.
Christina Manqele: I'm thinking the whole night what I must do if my neighbor won’t
give a bucket of water and then I wake up earl in the morning and I
found this place now -- I'm crying. Early in the morning, I saw this
place, I'm pushing myself there. Push myself of cutting all these
things now and then I make a place now to come here to pick up
this water here. I need to bath the children and washing and things.
Narrator: In a unique piece of legislation, South Africa celebrated new Water
Act gives each household the right by law to basic allowance of
6,000 liters of free water per month. In view of this, the
community rallied around to help Christina to make an urgent
application to the high court to get her water reconnected. But it
wasn’t until three months later that she finally got to argue the case
in court. In the meantime, she still has no water. In desperation, she
decided to reconnect her own water despite the act the authority
say this is against the law.
Christina Manqele: That’s why I go back there to open the water because I need the
water because I'm scared for the cholera and then I need the water
because of my condition. I need to drink water all the time because
like a drip, I haven’t got a spleen now. I'm worried for the children,
the suffering of the children, that’s why if I never do that thing, I’d
die. I can't stay without water.
Narrator: Partly as a result of having reconnected her own water illegally,
Christina lost her case. Today, she is still forced to use illegal
water she struggles to payoff her bill. As more and more household
have their water cutoff, the community is now taking the law into
their own hands. They’ve become experts reconnecting water.
Brandon Pillay: What happens is, inside of this piping as we’re going to open it
now is we’re going to undo it. There’s a copper disc that is placed
inside of this pipe and that actually shuts off the water. So, what
we do is we just try to reopen up this pipe and on opening this
pipe, we just remove the disc and then we have water.
Okay and this is the copper disc and we have water already. So, we
just put the pipe back in and then open up the main and the water
comes. Cutting off somebody’s water is totally inhumane and it is
definitely against the constitutional right to basic services. I mean
people can't afford to pay and you can't force them to pay. And so,
people are forced to reconnect illegally and are forced to actually
go to bed knowing that they use illegal electricity and clean water.
It is something that they have to do because they have children and
this is a basic necessity for the people in this community. And
that’s basically it, we have water again.
Orlean Naidoo: Out of desperation, people are reconnecting their water. The
council can call them thieves but obviously, people have become
so desperate that they can't do without water. The story of free
water is now going around for about six months now but people
still don’t have water. The water is cutoff. So, there is no free
water for the poor. The rule is that you payoff your arrears before
you get water. So, what kind of free water service is that? When
people can't afford to pay their daily bill, how are they going to
payoff the arrears to get the free water? So, that is just a false hope
for people.
Narrator: So, what value is the law that guarantees a right to water but only
of the cost of fully recovered.
Ronnie Kasrils: There must be payment for municipal services. If there isn’t then
how can the municipality function? It can't at all but the
municipality must follow through my regulations and in terms of
our Water Act, they’ve got to give you notice to community,
they’ve got to do everything possible to ensure that they are
collecting the rights and they have a mandatory right if they cutoff
water to ensure that that community has certain degree of excess
even if its by installing standpipes in the streets.
Narrator: But the people here claim that they have been giving no warning or
basic access and they're fined every time they reconnect
themselves illegally.
Male: As a community, we have rallied together and now said that we
would reconnect the water every time that they disconnect. So, it
means that every time we reconnect, they also charge us a fee for
illegally reconnecting it. So, it means that on every month, I think
on a monthly basis and sometimes maybe twice a month, they
would come to check if we’re still using illegal water, they’ll cut
you off and then you reconnect and they cut off and you reconnect.
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