Who and what is AfriForum?

AfriForum is an Afrikaans civil rights organisation that protects the rights of minority groups at national as well as provincial level, and anyone who can identify with AfriForum’s principles and objectives may join the organisation. AfriForum’s community plan focuses on mobilising communities to thus take control of their own streets and neighbourhoods again. AfriForum ensures that your constitutional and civil rights are recognised and protected at national level.

Wie en wat is AfriForum?

AfriForum is ’n Afrikaanse burgerregteorganisasie wat die regte van minderheidsgroepe op sowel nasionale as provinsiale vlak beskerm, en enigiemand wat met AfriForum se beginsels en doelstellings kan identifiseer, mag by die organisasie aansluit. AfriForum se gemeenskapsplan fokus daarop om gemeenskappe te mobiliseer om só weer beheer terug te neem oor hul eie strate en woonbuurtes. AfriForum verseker dat jou grondwetlike én burgerregte op nasionale vlak erken en beskerm word.

Environmental affairs Media statements | Media statements

AfriForum opposes intended racial quotas for water use

ByAfriForum 01/06/202301/06/2023

The civil rights organisation AfriForum and its legal team are preparing comments against the intended changes to water legislation that will require 75% black ownership of businesses that require a water use licence. This follows after the Department of Water and Sanitation (DWS) published revised draft regulations on water use licences.

According to the draft regulations, applications to license the extraction of ground or surface water, the storage of water in a dam and the performance of stream flow reduction activities (such as forestry) will henceforth only be considered by the DWS if the company applying for it meets certain racial quotas. The required percentage of black shareholding will apparently be determined by the annual volume of water that will be extracted or stored by the user or the land area that will be used for forestry.

These changes are not well thought through and AfriForum is concerned that other important requirements in the application process may be overshadowed for the sake of affirmative action.

“The government has a constitutional duty to manage and protect the country’s water resources in a sustainable manner. While South Africa is a water-scarce country, water infrastructure is crumbling across the country and we are heading for a crisis, transformation is being used as a smokescreen behind which the DWS’s failures hide,” says Marais de Vaal, AfriForum’s advisor for Environmental Affairs.

De Vaal further says that since state organs and the mining sector are exempt from these regulations, the impression is created that the DWS is making a targeted effort to make the agricultural and forestry sectors’ water use subject to racial quotas.

AfriForum will oppose these intended amendments and has already instructed its legal team to investigate the legality thereof.