When Policy Hits Practice: Structure, Agency, and Power in South African Water Governance

ABSTRACT

A new water governance framework with the aim of overcoming past racial inequalities in water access and addressing the critical challenges of water security in the country was developed by the post-Apartheid South African government in the years following 1994. The adoption of ideas of collaborative governance and institutional devolution associated with integrated water resources management (IWRM) are central to this framework. Using social theory, this study examines structural and agential dimensions of power manifested during the establishment process of a water user association in the Northwest Province of South Africa. Portraying that the establishment process of this new institution was flawed due to power asymmetries of interacting actors, this article unmasks supposedly collective decision-making processes in collaborative water governance. As the establishment of water user associations in South Africa is an ongoing political process, our findings have societal relevance for the country’s future water policy implementation.

KEYWORDS:

• Collaborative governance
• institutions
• power
• resources and capabilities
• South Africa
• water policy
• water user association

Acknowledgments

We are grateful to Dr. Bruce Missingham, Dr. Bimo Nkhata, Dr. Rose-Marie Bezuidenhout, Dr. James Patterson, Garth Barnes, and Dr. Charles Breen for their helpful comments on this article. We also thank the International Water Security Network, funded by Lloyd’s Register Foundation. We are furthermore grateful to Society & Natural Resources editors Peter Leigh Taylor and Dr. David Sonnenfeld and three anonymous reviewers for their invaluable comments and suggestions.

Notes

Catchment management agencies (CMAs) as river basin organizations were supposed to take up a similar role on regional, provincial level, but 18 years after the enactment of the NWA 1998 only two CMAs are fully operational in South Africa. CMAs and WUAs were supposed to manage water across provincial and local scale in a cooperative way (Department of Water and Sanitation [DWS] 2014).

We agree with Berry (n.d., 2) in considering collaboration as a “somewhat more active notion of participation in which individuals or groups (usually referred to as stakeholders) debate, consult, and make decisions associated with an endeavor.”

The idea of a “theory frame” refers to an analytical frame as analytical concept that emphasizes (among other criteria) the importance of past research for present theory, the fact that theory is clustered and is often presented in a nested set of frames, and that theory frames are context dependent (Rueschemeyer 2009).

This WMA is now merged with other areas to form the Limpopo–Northwest WMA. However, at the time of the research the area was called Crocodile (West)–Marico WMA.

The National Water Act 1998 of South Africa specifies existing lawful use (ELU) in Chapter 4, Section 22 and Chapter 4, Sections 32–35. A process called validation and verification with the aim of transferring ELU into new licenses adjusted in terms of the allocated volume in relation to the actual water use has been initiated. This has, however, been largely delayed due to existing human and financial capacity deficits (Mochotli 2010).

The de facto connection between land ownership and entitlements to productive water has been a contested issue in South Africa since 1994. Mochotli (2010) and Misibi and Dlamini (2011) provide useful insights into this matter, including the African National Congress (ANC) government’s limited progress in its Water Allocation Reform (WAR).

This WUA would have constituted a new institution, as commercial farmers in the area have not been previously organized into so-called irrigation boards (see Department of Water Affairs and Forestry [DWAF] 2007).

The Constitution of the Republic of South Africa surely provides another central piece of legislation in terms of water governance and property of land and water, especially Section 25 of the Constitution. However, due to the limited publication-related latitude, it does not play a major role in this article.