[DEBATE] : Re: UKZN collaboration with water commodification

Tue Apr 25 16:16:52 BST 2006

I see that Zoe Wilson of CCS is on the team of people that received the
funding from eThekwini municipality.  Fight hard Zoe!

David 

-----Original Message-----
From: debate-bounces at lists.kabissa.org
[mailto:debate-bounces at lists.kabissa.org] On Behalf Of Richard Pithouse
Sent: Tuesday, April 25, 2006 11:07 AM
To: debate at lists.kabissa.org
Subject: [DEBATE] : UKZN collaboration with water commodification

People may find it instructive to read these three short pieces together.
The first is the front page story from the very glossy UKZN management
newspaper, the second a randomly selected press release from Neil Macleod,
old enemy of the CCF and head of eThekwini Water (just to give a sense of
how he approaches things), and the third made up of excerpts from an article
about civil society water commodification in Durban written by Fiona Lumsden
and Alex Loftus with CCS funding. We wait to see what kind of work will come
out of Macleod's purchase of academic services for the Municipality.

UKZNdaba, Vol 3, No 2/3

WATER PARTNERSHIP WITH MUNICIPALITY

UKZN's Pollution Research Group has given effect to the UKZN eThekwini
Municipality partnership by signing an agreement by means of which the
Municipality provides financial support for planning and policy development
in the area of sanitation

Mr Neil Macleod. head of the eThekwini Water and Sanitation, announced that
the Municipality will sponsor the project to the tune of R1 million a year
for five years.

"The eThekwini Municipality had faith in what we do and developed a
relationship in order for us to answer specific research questions about low
cost sanitation, treatment of water and provision of quality domestic water,
which is the critical part of service delivery", says Mr. Chris Brouckaert
from Chemical Engineering. Group member Mrs Kitty Foxon says that other
research has focussed on developing technology for sanitation, DESIGNING
CHARGING SYSTMES (TARIFFS), examining the safety of water in tanks, and
looking at sustainable water supply and treatment systems. Environmental
sustainability is a recurring theme. Members of the Pollution Research Group
are Professor Chris Buckley; Mrs Kitty Foxon; and Ms Elena Frederick from
Chemical Engineering; and Professor Mike Smith and Dr Niccola Rodda, from
Biological Sciences. Close collaborators include Dr. Stephen Knight,
Community Health and Dr. Zoe Wilson, Centre for Civil Society.

http://www.durban.gov.za/eThekwini/Municipality/press/305

DISPUTE OVER WATER DISCONNECTIONS

PRESS RELEASE

The eThekwini Municipality has received strong criticism following
widespread disconnection of water to households owing arrears for the
service. The residents of Lamontville recently blocked off Road 1, the
area's largest thoroughfare in protest of the disconnections.

Mr Neil Macleod, Head of eThekwini Water and Sanitation, said the customers
in Lamontville whose connections have been removed, are those who have
repeatedly removed the restrictor washers that limit their daily water use
to the 6kl of free water (equivalent to 8 x 25 litres) which Council
provides to all households. The restrictors were installed after the water
accounts were not being paid....it is a criminal offence to tamper with the
water supply and that customers who interfere with the restrictor system
will face a total cut off.

http://www.ukzn.ac.za/ccs

>>> 

ends

ENQUIRIES: NEIL MACLEOD
HEAD: WATER AND SANITATION
TEL. 302-4911
083 274 6990

Inanda's struggle for water through pipes and tunnels:
Exploring state-civil society relations in a post apartheid informal
settlement

- Alex Loftus and Fiona Lumsden, CCS Research Report

http://www.ukzn.ac.za/ccs/files/CCS-RR6.pdf

In Durban a tri-sector partnership was launched in 1998 involving eThekwini
Water Services (eTWS), Vivendi Water (a French owned multinational company)
and Mvula Trust (a service delivery non-governmental organisation (NGO)) 5.
The scheme was targeted at two areas of Durban - Inanda and Ntzuma - under
the Business Partners for Development (BPD)6 -'KwaZulu Natal (KZN) pilot
project'7. BPD is a project-based initiative created by the World Bank in
1998 and funded in part by the UK's Department for International
Development8. Vivendi Water together with the World Bank and Water Aid of
the United Kingdom are the co-convenors of the water and sanitation
'cluster', of which the KZN project forms a large part. The BPD group is
designed to study, support, and promote model examples of partnerships
involving business, government, and civil society,

>>>

It is also interesting to note Mvula's links with The World Bank and
consider how its decision to become involved in the BPD projects might have
flowed from such close relations17. Piers Cross, the CEO of Mvula left the
Bank to establish the organisation and has, subsequently, returned to the
Bank (several others involved in the project have followed the same career
path) leaving behind, what one interviewee referred to as a 'natural
affiliation' between the Bank and Mvula (ibid)....With a vested link to the
state and the neoliberal policies promoted by The World Bank, this
organisation can be viewed as deflecting communities' attention away from
the possibilities for genuine redistribution.

>>>

In Durban, citizens are first and foremost being considered as customers.

>>>

A much larger multi-national is involved than has been before in Durban's
water sector, more profits could potentially be made from partnerships and
yet risk is quite likely to be placed back upon the public sector. As Neil
Macleod (the executive director of eThekwini water services) categorically
states; "partnerships are preparing the utility, the council, labour and
other stakeholders for the future; a future in which there will be much more
involvement of the private sector" (World Bank 2002: 7).

>>>

(In Durban) community participation becomes a euphemism for market-oriented
policies that try to shape the public as paying consumers of a public
service. Any genuine attempt at dialogue and participation is lost.

>>>

Africa is the only country in the world to include a human right to water in
its constitution31. It has strongly emphasised this in recent legislation
and a free water policy makes further attempts to enshrine this in local
government policy32. Yet, in reality, many are being excluded from clean
drinking water because of their inability to pay. In October 2002, headlines
in the Durban Daily News brought home such contradictions, as it reported on
the plight of The Ark, a shelter for the homeless in Durban, housing up to
nine hundred people. This shelter was cut off from the water supply because
of its non-payment of water bills (Sithole 2002:1)33, resulting in people
being required to fetch buckets from the beachfront for the elderly and
sick. The ensuing outbreak of diarrhoeal diseases required 35 people to be
hospitalised. In Durban alone there are 800-1000 household disconnections
per day (Reg Bailey, Interview: 14th February, 2003), a stark reminder of
the contradictory nature of the free water policy.

>>>

Women, particularly in relation to water, are at the forefront of the
contradictions between the promises and realities of neoliberal service
delivery. Women still carry backbreaking loads of water, walk long distances
to feed and wash their families, and in some cases are still paying for this
"privilege".

>>>

Talk of progressive tariffs from left academics (see Bond 2003) (and the
Metro itself), although seeming progressive, is acting to limit
fundamentally alternative possibilities. Similarly "The public goods
argument applied in the minimalist way achieves precisely a kind of
hegemonic de-politicisation, de-collectivisation and atomisation of
collective consumption politics, with the state only accepting partial
responsibility for needs. By having to include and exclude certain goods and
then having to stipulate basic amounts of these public services the public
goods argument implicates itself in existing power relations" (Ruiters
2002). In Inanda itself, in terms of organising around basic services, with
a longer-term vision, some are beginning to think these issues through in
terms of possible collectives. One such group, the People's Dialogue
(Piesang, Inanda) has been listening and learning from their sister
organisation in Namibia where in certain communities water delivery has been
collectivised (Focus Group Interview, Piesang: 4th December 2002).

>>>

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