South African Water Wars

Paper Summary:

Historically, the availability of water in South Africa has always been a problem, and this problem is mainly attributed to its geographical and climatic conditions. This paper explains that, out of the 40 million people of South Africa, 40% are deprived of the appropriate supplies of drinking water. Both urban and rural settlements are dependent on the scarce distribution of water resources by the state. It discusses how the state, on the other hand, has granted the distribution of the water supplies to a foreign company and has led to an increasing, ultimate deprivation of the water supplies for the poor, who had to choose between bread and water. It explains how this selection led to the outburst of cholera back in the year 2000, killing 300 people and infecting more than a quarter of million people.

From the Paper:

"In the year 2000, Suez Lyonnaise Des Eaux, a French company, took over the majority of the water supplies in South Africa, and with this French company many other multinationals have also flown in to reap the profits like Vivendi, Saur and Biwater. It is a norm with privatization that state subsidies are reduced and the prices of the utilities goes up. The majority to suffer from the privatization reform is the general public and the poor. This is because the private companies operate under the motive of profit generation rather than the welfare of the public. This profit motive has resulted, in this case, in a four hundred percent increase in the prices of water in South Africa. Where the people who could not afford to "buy" the water were dumped in to intense levels of poverty and the ones who could afford had to tolerate a more expensive standard of living. Poor, for whom it was even hard to live under a tin roof, were the majority of the sufferers. There were many incidents of aggression against the privatization policy and many incidents of breaking the water pipe lines for search of water. However, such aggression was conveniently dealt with force (Gleick et al., 2002)."

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