The age of commodity: water privatization in Southern Africa

314 Pages·2005·2.324 MB·English

by  David A. McDonald, Greg Ruiters

The Age of Commodity
The Age of Commodity
Water Privatization in Southern Africa
Edited by
David A. McDonald
and
Greg Ruiters
London•Sterling, VA
First published by Earthscan in the UK and USA in 2005
Copyright © David A. McDonald and Greg Ruiters, 2005
All rights reserved
ISBN: 1-84407-134-0 paperback
ISBN: 1-84407-135-9 hardback
Typesetting by JS Typesetting, Porthcawl, Mid Glamorgan
Printed and bound in the UK by Cromwell Press Ltd, Trowbridge
Cover design by Danny Gillespie
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A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
McDonald, David A. (David Alexander)
The age of commodity : water privatization in Southern Africa / David A.
McDonald and Greg Ruiters.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 1-84407-134-0 (pbk.) – ISBN 1-84407-135-9 (hardback)
1. Water utilities—Africa, Southern. 2. Water-supply—Economic aspects—Africa,
Southern. 3. Privatization—Africa, Southern. I. Ruiters, Greg, 1959– II. Title.
HD4465.A356M38 2005
363.6’1–dc22
2004022851
Printed on elemental chlorine-free paper
Contents
List of Figures, Tables and Boxes vii
About the Contributors ix
Acknowledgements xi
List of Acronyms and Abbreviations xii
Introduction: From Public to Private (to Public Again?) 1
David A. McDonald and Greg Ruiters
PART1 THEORY AND PRACTICE
1 Theorizing Water Privatization in Southern Africa 13
David A. McDonald and Greg Ruiters
2 The New Water Architecture of SADC 43
Larry A. Swatuk
3 The Constitutional Implications of Commercializing Water in
South Africa 59
Sean Flynn and Danwood Mzikenge Chirwa
4 Turning Off the Taps on the GATS 77
Karl Flecker and Tony Clarke
PART2 CASE STUDIES IN SOUTH AFRICA
5 Entrenching Inequalities: The Impact of Corporatization on Water
Injustices in Pretoria 99
Peter McInnes
Box1 South African Water Caucus (SAWC) Resolution on Water and Trade
Adopted August 2003 118
6 Managing the Poor by Remote Control: Johannesburg’s
Experiments with Prepaid Water Meters 120
Ebrahim Harvey
Box2 Resolution on Prepaid Meters by South African Municipal Workers’
Union (Samwu) 128
vi THE AGE OF COMMODITY
7 Public Money, Private Failure: Testing the Limits of Market Based
Solutions for Water Delivery in Nelspruit 130
Laïla Smith, Amanda Gillett, Shauna Mottiar and Fiona White
8 The Political Economy of Public–Private Contracts: Urban Water
in Two Eastern Cape Towns 148
Greg Ruiters
Box3 Declaration of the Coalition Against Water Privatisation (South Africa) 166
9 The Murky Waters of Second Wave Neoliberalism:
Corporatization as a Service Delivery Model in Cape Town 168
Laïla Smith
Box4 Western Cape Anti-Eviction Co-ordinating Committee (South Africa),
Press Statement 188
10 ‘Free Water’ as Commodity: The Paradoxes of Durban’s Water
Service Transformations 189
Alex Loftus
Box5 The Phiri Water Wars of 2003 204
11 The Rise and Fall of Water Privatization in Rural South Africa:
A Critical Evaluation of the ANC’s First Term of Office, 1994–1999 206
Stephen Greenberg
PART3 CASE STUDIES IN THE REGION
12 Stillborn in Harare: Attempts to Privatize Water in a City in
Crisis 225
Rekopantswe Mate
13 ‘There is Still No Alternative’: The Beginnings of Water
Privatization in Lusaka 240
Karen Cocq
14 Water Privatization in Namibia: Creating a New Apartheid? 258
Labour Resource and Research Institute (LaRRI)
Box 6 Draft Manifesto Against Water Privatization in Namibia 273
15 The New Face of Conditionalities: The World Bank and Water
Privatization in Ghana 275
Rudolf Nsorwine Amenga-Etego and Sara Grusky
Box 7 The Accra Declaration on the Right to Water 291
Index 293
List of Figures, Tables and Boxes
FIGURES
5.1 Tshwane households by income range 102
5.2 Average annual daily demand sold per area per day, year ending
June 2001 103
5.3 Monthly household water consumption by tariff block in Pretoria
and Mamelodi (July 2002–June 2003) 104
5.4 Tshwane household water tariff (2003–2004) 109
5.5 Tshwane’s household tariff compared with Cape Town and
Johannesburg (2003–2004) 111
7.1 Location of Mpumalanga Province in South Africa 131
7.2 Map of (renamed) Mbombela Municipality 137
9.1 Monthly consumption of 60 kl of water in Cape Town and
Tygerberg (1997–2002) 175
9.2 Monthly consumption of 10 kl of water in Cape Town and
Tygerberg (1997–2002) 176
9.3 Total water cutoffs in the Cape Town and Tygerberg
administrations (1991–2001) 181
9.4 Water cutoffs per 1000 customers billed in Tygerberg (1999–2001) 182
13.1 Water bills for different consumption levels under NWASCO
tariff structure 249
TABLES
1.1 Different forms of water services ‘privatization’ 16
2.1 SADC states’ access to clean water and sanitation 44
2.2 International river basins shared between SADC states 49
4.1 GATS rules: current and under negotiation 81
5.1 Existing water service level summary 102
7.1 Monthly household income by locality and percentage of
population in the Nelspruit TLC 132
7.2 Unemployment rates by locality in the Nelspruit TLC 133
7.3 Water tariffs in Nelspruit 142
9.1 Water tariff schedule for 2002/03 176
10.1 Charges in rand/kl of water consumed as of July 2003 192
viii THE AGE OF COMMODITY
11.1 Number and percentage of non-urban African households with
selected water supply, 1996–1999 209
11.2 Percentage of African non-urban households paying for water,
1995–1999 214
11.3 Distance non-urban African household residents have to go to
fetch water, 1996–1999 216
11.4 Per capita consumption on various water supply projects 217
11.5 Non-functioning schemes 217
12.1 Harare’s sources of water and their net capacities 228
13.1 Severn-Trent’s recommended ‘rising banded tariff’ 252
BOXES
15.1 Water sector reform conditions in IMF and World Bank loans to
Ghana 282
15.2 Major consultant firms commissioned on Ghana water
privatization 287
About the Contributors
Rudolf Nsorwine Amenga-Etego is a lawyer, farmer and activist. He is a
member of the governing council of the Foundation for Security and Develop-
ment in Africa, executive director of the Foundation for Grassroots Initiatives
in Africa and national campaign coordinator of the Coalition Against the
Privatization of Water in Ghana. He is also the Goldman prize recipient for 2004.
Danwood Mzikenge Chirwa is a lecturer in law at the University of Cape Town.
He has published widely in the field of human rights and has practised law in
Malawi.
Tony Clarke has been a civil society observer, writer and activist on inter-
national trade issues for over 30 years. He is founder and director of the Polaris
Institute in Canada and co-author of several books on trade, water privatization
and anti-corporate globalization activism.
Karen Cocq is completing a Master’s degree in geography at Queen’s Uni-
versity in Canada.
Karl Flecker is the education coordinator with the Polaris Institute. The Institute
has been working with public sector unions and civil society in a number of
countries, including South Africa, to better understand the implications of the
WTO’s GATS agreement.
Sean Flynn is an associate at Spiegel & McDiarmid in Washington, DC, and
founder/director of the Institute on Law and Development. He was a clerk for
Chief Justice Arthur Chaskalson in South Africa and a lecturer in constitutional
law at the University of Witwaterstrand, Johannesburg.
Amanda Gillett holds a Master’s degree in public and development manage-
ment from the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. She is currently
a programme manager with the Australian Agency for International Develop-
ment (AusAID) in Pretoria.
Stephen Greenberg works in the rural NGO sector in South Africa as a researcher,
writer and policy analyst. He has a Master’s degree from the Department of
Geography and Environmental Studies at the University of Witwatersrand.
x THE AGE OF COMMODITY
Sara Grusky is an academic and midwife who now works with Public Citizen’s
‘Water for All’ campaign, defending the rights of communities to clean and
affordable water.
Ebrahim Harvey is a former journalist and recently completed a Master’s
degree at the University of the Witwatersrand on the Johannesburg water
contract.
The Labour Resource and Research Institute (LaRRI) is a labour-based
organization based in Windhoek, Namibia, which carries out education and
research programmes on labour and development issues in Southern Africa. It
is also a founding member of the African Labour Research Network (ALRN).
Alex Loftus is completing a DPhil in the School of Geography and the Environ-
ment at Oxford University looking at the political ecology of struggles for water
in Durban.
Rekopantswe Mate is a lecturer in the Department of Sociology at the Uni-
versity of Zimbabwe. Her research focuses on development issues.
Peter McInnes is completing a Master’s degree in sociology at the University
of Witwatersrand on social mobilization, municipal services and the South
African Bill of Rights.
David A. McDonald is director of Development Studies at Queen’s University
in Canada and co-director of the Municipal Services Project.
Shauna Mottiar is based in Durban as a researcher for the Centre for Policy
Studies. She is a PhD candidate at the University of the Witwatersrand conduct-
ing research on democratic consolidation.
Greg Ruiters is senior lecturer in Political and International Studies at Rhodes
University, South Africa, and co-director of the Municipal Services Project.
Laïla Smith is director of research and evaluation for the Contract Management
Unit for the City of Johannesburg, and is responsible for monitoring Johannes-
burg Water.
Larry A. Swatuk is associate professor and head of the Natural Resource Policy,
Institutions and Law Research Unit at the University of Botswana’s Harry
Oppenheimer Okavango Research Centre, Maun, Botswana.
Fiona White is a PhD candidate at the University of London working on civil
society and social movements.