Race quotas: AfriForum submits comments against proposed race quotas for water use

The civil rights organisation AfriForum has today submitted comprehensive comments on the controversial draft regulations on water use licenses, which were published in the Government Gazette on 19 May 2023 for public comment. The most notable change that these proposed amendments to water legislation envisage is the requirement that an applicant for a water use license will need up to 75% black ownership.

AfriForum’s biggest concern is several provisions that point to Senzo Mchunu, the Minister of Water and Sanitation’s intention to issue regulations that contradict the National Water Act (Act 36 of 1998) and the Promotion of Administrative Justice Act (Act 3 of 2000). A good example of this is the attempt to circumvent requirements set by the National Water Act for water license applications and the introduction of unlawful requirements regarding race quotas.

Although certain elements of the revised draft regulations are necessary and commendable, such as the objective of speeding up the water license application process, they contain a host of errors, contradictions and unlawful provisions. These range from simple misspellings and faulty cross-references, which at best make certain provisions meaningless or confusing, to unreasonable requirements such as strict deadlines that applicants must meet, while system downtime allows the Department of Water and Sanitation to deviate from deadlines.

Earlier AfriForum had therefore already sent a request to the minister to withdraw the revised draft regulations, but it fell on deaf ears. With the submission of comments, AfriForum still fulfils an essential role in the legislative process, because every shortcoming of the draft regulations is pointed out in detail and placed on record, which the minister must now take into account before a revised version of it can be made public again.

“The hope still remains that the draft regulations will be scrapped in their entirety and that the minister will start with a clean slate, precisely because the current draft regulations are riddled with problems,” says Marais de Vaal, AfriForum’s advisor for Environmental Affairs.

If the minister and his Department were to continue with the controversial regulations, AfriForum will consider further remedies at its disposal.