Continued Decay of South Africa’s Basic Water and Sanitation Infrastructure and Service Delivery

Abstract

South Africa has focussed upon providing water access and services to its population since 1996. The focus of only providing new water access has led to the operational reality of existing aged infrastructure being stretched to the maximum or towards failure and collapse. Mismanagement, misappropriation of funds, alleged corruption and an overall capacity and skills shortfalls has led to a third of the country’s infrastructure being dysfunctional. Almost half of the country’s wastewater treatment works are in poor or critical condition, causing significant human health risks and continued degradation of ecosystems. The available statistics of South Africa’s overall progress in trying to ensure access to water and sanitation for all and achieving SDG 6 by 2030, must be viewed as a whole to obtain the real picture. In conjunction with the COVID-19 pandemic, the observed and determined negative trends in providing access to water and sanitation has intensified. It has become evident that a lower percentage of households have reliable water supply than in 1994. Despite the delivery of infrastructure and access having increased on paper, in reality, the reliability of these services has decreased with some water supply schemes becoming dysfunctional.