If you missed last week’s piece, it concluded by stating that South Africa had completed building only one power station since 1991 and had not done any better in terms of dams. The piece was about Eskom. The only dam built from scratch since 1994 is the De Hoop dam.

How many dams are there in South Africa? The Water Research Commission says there are over 500 government dams. However, in February 2018, the acting chairperson of the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Water and Sanitation was quoted as telling the committee the number was actually 350. So, with the first government dam, the Hartbeespoort dam, having been built in 1925, 350 or 500 dams were built in 69 years and only one was built in the last 28 years.

As to how many dams in total there are in South Africa, the acting chairperson said there are 4 000, which means 3 650 are privately owned. According to an article published by Independent Online in February 2018, “MPs [had demanded] that privately owned dams be nationalised”. But nothing seems to have happened subsequently. So, is nationalisation off the table or forgotten?

At the time, there were calls for privately owned dams to be transferred to the Department of Water and Sanitation, with the National Freedom Party cited as saying: “We should all be benefiting from the natural resource. Ministers must start appropriation of land, with the land where the dams are. We appreciate their donation, but it is not a correct thing to have people deciding whether to give you a natural resource or not.” Further, the acting chairperson stated: “We want to know who is this one that has so much water and the remaining 3 000 dams. Who is in control of those dams? We have a drought crisis here, but some dams are privately owned. This is something that is political, and we have to resolve it. It cannot be that, when so many of our people are carrying containers every day.” So, why was this the last word on the matter?

It is worth stating that there is the National Water Act, 1998, which was assented to on August 20, 1998. The preamble to the Act reads: “Recognising that water is a scarce and unevenly distributed national resource which occurs in many different forms which are all part of a unitary, interdependent cycle; Recognising that, while water is a natural resource that belongs to all people, the discriminatory laws and practices of the past have prevented equal access to water, and use of water resources; Acknowledging the national government’s overall responsibility for and authority over the nation’s water resources and their use, including the equitable allocation of water for beneficial use, the redistribution of water, and international water matters; Recognising that the ultimate aim of water resource management is to achieve the sustainable use of water for the benefit of all users; Recognising that the protection of the quality of water resources is necessary to ensure sustainability of the nation’s water resources in the interests of all water users; and Recognising the need for the integrated management of all aspects of water resources and, where appropriate, the delegation of management functions to a regional or catchment level so as to enable everyone to participate.”

On May 5, 2015, www.brandsouthafrica.com published an article titled ‘South Africa to build six new dams’, but the secondary headline was more telling: ‘South Africa plans to build or expand six dams over the next decade to address the long-term water and sanitation needs of the country’. If you are counting, there have been two expansions and a new build. So, three to go, and three years left to do it.

Will government build them, or claim them?