(Parliamentary debate: South African National Water Resources Infrastructure SOC Limited Draft Bill)
Everything the ANC touches turns into a total disaster riddled with corruption and incompetence.
So, it is very alarming that government is planning to exercise even more control over the availability and supply of clean water through establishing a National Water Resources Infrastructure Agency.
The Agency will function as an entity under government’s control with the aim of, among other things, administrating advisory services, managing financing and ensuring that water infrastructure is maintained.
The FF Plus can say with certainty that it is doomed to fail under ANC rule.
The ANC’s track record of incompetence provides several significant reasons for the water crisis. Many water management experts have upped and left, mainly due to Affirmative Action (AA). Cadres lacking the necessary knowledge and experience have replaced them.
Most municipalities no longer have any experienced personnel in their employ, and contractors are appointed to do the work at exorbitant amounts even though they do not really understand the system.
It is shocking to see how quickly the issue of small towns not having water spilled over to the cities. In Johannesburg, thousands of people recently did not have water for two weeks because one official failed to open a valve.
Ironically enough, there is usually water available in most of these cases, but it cannot be supplied to the public due to incompetence and crumbling infrastructure.
Where water is supplied, the quality has deteriorated to such an extent that it is no longer safe for human consumption.
Approximately 35% of all Tshwane’s water and 50% of Johannesburg’s is lost as a result of decaying infrastructure. Additionally, the expertise responsible for Rand Water’s treatment works has seriously declined.
And to make matters worse, municipalities increasingly fail to pay bulk suppliers’ bills. Consequently, supply is either suspended or restricted and those who loyally pay their bills are bearing the brunt of it all.
Over the past three decades, millions of rand was earmarked for the maintenance, upgrading and construction of new infrastructure. The money, however, was misappropriated or stolen, and nothing is left but decay and decline.
Government has built only one dam in the past 30 years. Eight years ago, work commenced to extend the wall of the Clanwilliam Dam, but it is still incomplete.
As was the case with the power problem, the private sector will have to be involved in making plans for resolving the water crisis.
If action is not taken immediately, large numbers of people are going to start dying of hunger and thirst in the foreseeable future. Waiting for the ANC to resolve the problem would be fatal.
There is only one real solution: Rid the country of the ANC. There is an opportunity to do so on 29 May this year.
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