COALITION against WATER PRIVATISATION: sign the declaration

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COALITION against WATER PRIVATISATION

DECLARATION

One of the most celebrated achievements of South
Africa's transition to democracy is the Bill of Rights
enshrined in the Constitution. The Bill of Rights
provides that, "everyone has the right to have access
to sufficient water". The privatisation of water
violates that constitutional (and human) right in
every way imaginable. As the International Covenant
on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (to which the
South African is signatory) explicitly acknowledges,
"water is a public good fundamental for life and
health . the human right to water is indispensable for
leading a life of human dignity, it is prerequisite
for the realisation of other human rights". At all
levels of life - political, social, economic and
cultural - the privatisation of water is
anti-democratic, anti-social and anti-human.

As early as 1994, the South African government
introduced its policy on water in direct violation of
the RDP commitment to lifeline supply. This gave the
water bureaucrats the authority to provide water only
if there was a full cost recovery of operating,
maintenance and replacement costs. The GEAR policy in
1996 located the policies of water and other basic
needs within a neo-liberal macro-economic policy
framework.

Following the neo-liberal economic advice of the World
Bank, the International Monetary Fund and various
Western governments, the South African government
drastically decreased grants and subsidies to local
municipalities and city councils and supported the
development of financial instruments for privatised
delivery. This effectively forced local government to
turn towards commercialisation and privatisation of
basic services as a means of generating the revenue no
longer provided by the national state. Many local
government structures, using the enabling legislation
provided by the Municipal Services Act, began to
privatise public water utilities by entering into
service and management 'partnerships' with
multinational water corporations.

As a result of privatisation, water has ceased to be a
public good that is accessible and affordable to all
South Africans. Instead, water and sanitation have
become market commodities to be bought and sold on a
for-profit basis, notwithstanding the 'free' 6000
litres of water per household per month. That is not
enough to cover basic needs. Households are charged
for every additional drop they use, in order to recoup
the income foregone due to the first 6000 litres
provided. Moreover, millions of the poorest South
Africans do not have access to water services and thus
receive no allocation of free water.

The policy of 'cost-recovery' has seen the price of
water rising, necessarily hitting poor communities the
hardest. Unable to pay, poor families have been
cut-off from their water supplies - more than ten
million by the latest count. Additionally, over 2
million have been evicted from their homes, often as a
part of the associated legal process to recover debt
from poor 'customers'. Those poor communities without
previous access to clean water have either suffered
the same fate once infrastructure was provided or have
simply had to make do with sourcing water from
polluted streams and far-away boreholes.

The collective impact of water privatisation on the
majority of South Africans has been devastating. The
desperate search for any available source of water has
resulted in cholera outbreaks that have claimed the
lives of hundreds. Inadequate hygiene and 'self-serve'
sanitation systems have led to continuous exposure
(especially for children) to various preventable
diseases. There has been an increase in environmental
pollution and degradation arising from uncontrolled
effluent discharges. There is a scarcity of water for
food production. And, the human dignity of entire
communities has been ripped apart, as the right to the
most basic of human needs, water, has been turned into
a restricted privilege available only to those who can
afford it.

Water is a natural resource that, by its very nature,
must be collectively owned and enjoyed. Privatisation,
by its very nature, turns water into a commodity,
owned by corporate monopolies and enjoyed only on an
individualised basis. Nowhere is this monopolised and
individualised hijacking of the collective, human
right to water more apparent than in the latest
manifestation of privatised water provision, pre-paid
water metres. In the communities of Phiri (Soweto),
Orange Farm and in several other poor communities
across South Africa, private water corporations (with
the full backing of national and local government
officials) are installing pre-paid metres as a
technological tool to enforce both 'cost-recovery' and
self-disconnection. Those community members and
activists resisting privatised water in Phiri and in
other 'guinea pig' communities have been summarily
arrested. Many have been denied bail or have been
placed under apartheid-era bail conditions in order to
silence their voices and to crush collective community
resistance. Like the effect of the opposition from
government and corporate capital to apartheid
reparations, the majority of South Africans are being
intimidated and/or forcibly pushed into foregoing
their collective socio-economic rights, thus allowing
private corporations to continue profiting from their
poverty.

In light of the above, we demand that:
¨The criminalisation of dissent and opposition to the
privatisation of water be immediately stopped
¨Pre-paid metres be immediately outlawed and removed
from all communities where they have been installed
¨The government reverse its policy of privatising
water and all other basic needs by cancelling all
'service' contracts and 'management' agreements with
private water corporations
¨The government publicly affirm the human and
constitutional right of all South Africans to water by
ensuring full public ownership, operation and
management of public utilities in order to provide
free basic services for all
¨The government make a firm political and fiscal
commitment to roll-out universally accessible
infrastructure

The coalition includes the Phiri Concerned Residents
Committee, Anti-Privatisation Forum, Jubilee South
Africa, Landless Peoples Movement, Environmental
Justice Networking Forum, Freedom of Expression
Institute, Khanya College, Municipal Services Project,
ceasefire Campaign, Gender and Trade Network in
Africa.

Join the Coalition! Defend the right to water! Contact
011 339 4121

COALITION against WATER PRIVATISATION
PETITION against PRE-PAID WATER METERS

The government is privatising basic water services -
in particular the provision of water. The
privatisation of water is being implemented through
the installation of pre-paid water meter systems. The
working class and the poor will only have access to
the water they need for a decent life if they have
money.

In Phiri, the government in alliance with the big
bosses - Johannesburg Water and the French
multinational, Suez Lyonnaise des Eaux - have forcibly
attempted to install pre-paid water meters - they
called it Operation Gcin'amanzi. The residents of
Phiri are resisting these pre-paid meters and they
have been beaten, arrested and jailed for resisting.
It is not only in Phiri that these hated pre-paid
water meter systems are being installed. In Orange
Farm and throughout the country, poor working class
areas are being targeted with these water systems.

We are saying that the privatisation of water in the
form of the pre-paid water meter system is a violation
of people's basic human right to water and therefore
unconstitutional. From experience elsewhere in the
country and the world, it is clear that the
privatisation of water leads to massive increases in
the price of water that hit the poor communities the
hardest. It means that the working class and the poor
will be unable to afford water and therefore die. This
is exactly what happened in Kwa-Zulu Natal in 2001
when over 200 people died of cholera after having been
forced to drink water from polluted streams because
they could not afford to pay for water.

We the undersigned therefore demand:
1. The immediate scrapping of the pre-paid water
system.
2. The immediate stopping of the privatisation of
basic services like water.
3. The immediate end to the criminalisation of those
opposing privatisation.

Name Address Signature

The Coalition includes the Phiri Concerned Residents
Committee, Anti-Privatisation Forum, Jubilee South
Africa, Landless People's Movement, Environmental
Justice Networking Forum, Freedom of Expression
Institute, Khanya College, Municipal Services Project,
Ceasefire Campaign, Gender and Trade Network in Africa

Join the Coalition! Defend our right to water! Contact
011 339 4121