The land–water nexus: a critical perspective from South Africa

ABSTRACT

This article identifies a ‘land–water nexus’ in South Africa, whereby access to water is dependent upon access to land and therefore property relations. It argues that the post-apartheid water reform has strengthened the land–water nexus by causing an overlap of property regimes in water to the benefit of white commercial farmers and by favouring the use of water for accumulation purposes. The case study of the Waterberg is employed to illustrate three specific ways in which the nexus currently manifests, namely water commodification; the tightening of private control over water in private nature conservation; and water access via labour relations.

RÉSUMÉ

Cet article identifie un « nexus entre terre et eau » en Afrique du Sud, par lequel l’accès à l’eau dépend de l’accès à la terre, et ainsi des relations de propriété. Il avance que la réforme de l’eau post-apartheid a renforcé le nexus entre terre et eau en causant un chevauchement des régimes de propriété de l’eau au bénéfice des fermiers commerciaux blancs et en favorisant l’emploi de l’eau à des finalités accumulatives. L’étude de cas du Waterberg est employée afin d’illustrer trois manières spécifiques dans lesquelles le nexus se manifeste aujourd’hui, notamment : la marchandisation de l’eau ; le renforcement du contrôle du privé sur l’eau dans les zones privées de nature protégée ; et l’accès à l’eau à travers les relations de travail.

KEYWORDS:

• Access
• commodification
• land
• property
• South Africa
• water

MOTS-CLÉS:

• Accès
• marchandisation
• terre
• droits foncier
• Afrique du Sud
• eau

Acknowledgements

This article draws on my PhD thesis, which I wrote at the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS) of Erasmus University Rotterdam. I wish to acknowledge the institutional support received from ISS during my doctorate. In addition to my supervisors, Bram Büscher and Max Spoor, thanks are due to Murat Arsel and Jun Borras, who encouraged me to look at land in more depth. I am also grateful to two anonymous reviewers and to the journal editor, Alex Beresford, for their constructive comments, which helped me improve a first version of the article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Note on contributor

Michela Marcatelli is a postdoctoral research fellow in the Department of Geography, Environmental Management and Energy Studies of the University of Johannesburg. Her research interests include political ecology, water, land, energy and conservation.

Notes

1 That is, until the Department of Water and Sanitation was asked to make recommendations onto the Agricultural Policy Action Plan issued by the Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries in 2015.

2 I interpret this literature in a narrow sense, as those studies engaging explicitly with the post-apartheid water legislation and considering water resources rather than water services. These studies can be divided into three sub-groups according to the following thematic focuses: Integrated Water Resources Management (Bourblanc and Blanchon 2014; Mehta et al. 2014; van Koppen and Schreiner 2014a; Movik et al. 2016); water redistribution and issues of justice (Tapela 2008; Movik 2014; van Koppen and Schreiner 2014b; Mapedza et al. 2016); and connections between water and land reforms (Liebrand et al. 2012; Woodhouse 2012).

3 See van Koppen and Jha (2005) for a discussion of legal pluralism in water rights that also takes into consideration customary rights in the former Bantustans.

4 This is the law governing the overall management of the country’s water resources, whereas the Water Services Act of 1997 regulates the provision of drinking water for domestic uses.

5 This hypothesis needs further evidence, though. In fact, very little is known about the politics behind the state water laws and policies after 1994. For instance, the scholarship on the post-apartheid state and ruling party has largely overlooked the water domain (see for example the journal special issues edited by Beall, Gelb, and Hassim 2005; Pons-Vignon and Segatti 2013; Robinson, Steinberg, and Simon 2016 – although a possible exception is the work of Patrick Bond). Whereas the literature on the water reform has left the ANC to the margins, if present at all (Bourblanc 2015; Movik et al. 2016). New research would therefore be welcome on the water debates inside and outside the ANC and its allies, during and especially after the transition.

6 According to the definition provided by Movik et al. (2016, 459), ‘the Reserve basically entail[s] setting aside a certain amount of water in-stream, in order to be able to meet basic human and ecological needs.’

7 The land occupation process is open and fluid though, so that two out of the six extensions of which the township is now composed remain informal settlements to date, with shacks representing the only form of housing in three of them.