Water For Life Campaign
The AWCC brings local Water Action Committees and any interested activists, communities, and organisations together to campaign for Water For Life. This is a South African campaign, currently based primarily in the Western Cape, across the City of Cape Town and surrounding rural/farming areas. Why water FOR life?
We all know that water is required for life- we come from water, we are made up of water, we live amidst water, and we rely on daily water for everything from health, sanitation, food, drink, spirituality, joy, safety and more. Water, as the saying goes, is life. Without water, we will die. And unlike other resources like bricks for houses or electricity for energy, there is no alternative to water.
What is more, according to the UN, clean drinking water and sanitation is a prerequisite for the realisation of all other human rights besides the human right to water. In other words, all justice depends on access to the water we need.
Water connects us- there is only one water body which is limited and is connected in its cycles that have no boarders. Water makes up and connects all land, all air, and all living life from plants, to animals, to humans. Fresh water resources are finite and global. The statistics of rising water scarcity and water stress are alarming.
So what should water be used for?
What our campaign argues, is that water should be prioritised for life. That is, for every living being to have the water they need for the basic things of life. This should be the priority for all decisions made over the use, distribution, and care of our water system. This is our core demand: water for life.












Campaign Concerns:
We are concerned with all the ways that water for life is under threat by all forces viewing and using water for profit when there are people without water to drink, to wash, or to eat.
In South Africa, more than 5.3 million households (21 million people) don’t have clean water. (Department of Water and Sanitation Master Plan, 2019).
When water is treated as a commodity, to be contained, controlled, bought and sold, used as a good to make a profit, then we are all under threat of not having water for the basics of life now or the longterm care of our planet in the future.
Our campaign is concerned with the ways that water is being turned into blue gold- future water services and sanitation infrastructure ‘business opportunities’ are estimated to be in the trillions and has attracted attention from countless international financial institutions. Greedy water grabbing which began with colonial land (& water) theft, is on the rise.
Industries, often using water for luxury items for export while local people do not have enough water to meet their basic needs, are responsible for 22% of global water consumption.
We are concerned with the way that companies guzzled water during the Day Zero drought, wealthy individuals sink private boreholes, and municipal drinking water continues to be used for large swimming pools and golf courses. In Cape Town, 13% of the population use more than 51% of the City’s water.
We are concerned with this uneven distribution of water, and the way that corporations and governments divide us into customers who can only have water if we have money to buy it.
The cost recovery, running public services on a business model, is aligned to global capitalist extractivist logics, hungry for new resources to turn into commodities and to financialise- even putting water on the stock market.
We are concerned with the way our government has welcomed and allowed a creeping in of water privatisation, from companies with names like Johannesburg Water, outsourcing bill collection to the Red Ants, hiring unaccountable businesses to come install water meters.
We are concerned with the way that our governments are running the public sector on a private sector market rate cost-recovery model. Services are being outsourced to profit making companies, and huge loans are being taken out that need to be accounted to over the thirst of the majority who are unemployed and unable to afford these costs which are pushed onto the shoulders of individual households.
In this corporate model, we are all considered customers and get water only if we can pay.
We are concerned with the resulting drip system policy of the City of Cape Town which ‘punishes’ poor indebted household that go over the small allocations made to properties regardless of how many people life in the house, regardless of illness, mutual aid to neighbours, leaking pipes etc.
Water is life and patriarchy has established that it is women who are mostly responsible for reproducing and sustaining life- feeding and washing children, cooking, caring for the sick, daily and monthly hygiene needs, growing food, spending hours a day at great risk walking or and finding money to pay for water, and more.
Neoliberal capitalism thrives off of turning public services into private services to be contained, controlled, and sold for profit. This approach to privatising what should be public or social service (to sustain society regardless of access to capital and cash) pushes all the burdens of water scarcity and stress onto the shoulders of poor working class women, black women, across the world.
To make the Human Right To Water real, where everyone really gets the water they need to sustain life, we need to challenge water privatisation (ie the system that makes attaining these ‘rights’ impossible), and stop the corporate take over of water and profiting from water services.
We reject the creeping corporate take over of water in all its tricky manifestations. According to the Global Index, 79% of investment in water services is currently state run. In the next ten years, this will be reduced to 35%
Water should be approached as a commons and not a commodity, reserved for those who can afford it.
We say: keep water in public hands. If not, we will continue to see ongoing and expanding water apartheid which continues to hit those with the least, the most.
We say People over Profit.
We say End Water Apartheid.
We say Stop the Tide of Water Privatisation.
We say Stop the Water Management Devices aka Weapons of Mass Destruction.
We must prioritise water FOR LIFE.
Campaign Membership:
Our campaign aims to unite and fight for the 87% of Cape Town residents who are suffering from lack of access to water and stressed by high bills, children with diarrhoea, the dangers of walking long distances to water taps, threatened with cut offs, and turned into water police in their own homes. These are homes with no swimming pools, no cars to wash, no gardens to water who live with the consequences of the new drip system policy that continues to punish the poor.
Our campaign is women-led, taking our pace and direction from the bottom up, putting all the concerns of women at the frontlines of the water crisis who are the vast majority of our members, at the centre. In building this movement, we centre and defend a feminist politics of care. The personal is political and the political is personal.
Any individual or organisation or community is welcome to join our campaign. There is a role for everyone who shares our concerns to play. One of our founding motto’s is: Everyone is an Organiser.
Current Demands:
These are some of the urgent demands raised by members of Water Action Committees from across the Cape Flats including: Bishop Lavis, Makhaza, Hillview, Beacon Valley, Woodlands and Eastridge in Mitchell’s Plain, Elsie’s River, Nyanga, Capricorn, Enkanini in Khayelitsha, Ruyterwacht, Clarke Estate, Military Heights; and from the Witzenberg Justice Coalition, and the Voices of Azania Water Action Committee, which works with foreign nationals across Cape Town.
1. Water redistribution to address South African water apartheid.
Unaddressed legacies of land (and with it water) dispossession have resulted in ongoing racist segregation and a growing housing crisis with homes being allocated the same amount of ‘free’ ‘basic’ water regardless of how many people live on the property which result in high bills and cut offs for overcrowded homes…and with violent water cut offs.
We demand that the R for Redistribution is central to the usual Reduce, Recycle, Reuse approach to shared resources.
We demand that women’s specific needs for water are recognised and considered for a just redistribution of water resources in South Africa.
2. No to water privatisation. Stop running a public system on a private model.
Our concerns about water privatisation are addressed above. This is a system that will never enable water for life for all. There are alternative models to public services and protection of the commons.
3. End ALL Flow-Restriction Technologies, Disconnections, and Cut Offs. No to Water Meters, Ban the Drip System, Stop Cut-Offs, OPEN the Taps.
The majority of people with water arrears are not structurally equipped to waste water. We use water to meet basic needs.
We voiced these concerns when the City called for public opinion on the proposed ‘new’ water policy in 2021 and again when the reality that it is the wealthiest 13% of Cape Town that uses more than half of the Cities water supplies were exposed. The official policy of the renewed drip system puts profit over people, and punishes the poor. The City argues that it is “mandated” to collect all debts, as if they are not mandated to ensure access to adequate water.
We stand in solidarity with the Nelson Mandela Water Crisis Committee and residents protesting over denied access to water for the poor, and we say no to cut offs.
Likewise, we stand in solidarity against the recent unconstitutional actions of Johannesburg Water disconnecting so-called illegal water connections in Phumla Mqashi informal settlement in Lenasia South. Enough is enough.
4. Ensure clean safe drinking water for all.
Government must ensure that the quality of municipal drinking water is safe to drink. It has taken years of pressure for the City to make water testing transparent.
5. Stop deducting water arrears from electricity purchases.
The majority of families live far below the bread line. Yet, when we go to buy electricity, our water arrears are automatically deducted. This is criminal- it takes away our choices and leaves us with neither electricity nor water.
End the practice of billing households for the installation of meters they did not agree to and scrap arrears as promised when meters are installed.
6. Give schools adequate free water. Open water taps at all schools.
How can we be asked to send water to school with our children when we have no water at home? We have annual diarrhoea season and already we do not have adequate water intake yet poor households now need to send water to already overstretched schools.
We call on the government to support schools with basic services, and to stop pressuring the schools with market-cost water bills.
The Western Cape Education Dept is giving schools financial incentives to install water meters and corporations are now jumping on board to what is cruelly called the Aqualoc Challenge, packaged as benevolent aid “corporate South Africa has come on board to support a Smart Water Meter challenge.” Community gardens depend on school grounds to grow much needed food, and our children need to be encouraged to drink water and wash their hands, not go without water.
7. Fix leaks and blocked drains.
We sit with cesspools of sewerage that make our children sick and leave us with rashes, stink, and filth. We are charged for water leaked into the ground. These are apartheid era problems now transferred onto us. When pipes are replaced, they come with poor quality and workmanship which inevitably leave us back in the same problem.
8. Allocate water by people, not by household.
We have many families sharing one property with one water access point. What is called Free Basic Water is not enough to meet the basics for the numbers of people in our households. Between 1996-2016 backyard growth by 256% We do not waste water. In fact we do not drink enough water, have enough water to wash, and have to risk dangerous situations walking to buy water from druglords with money we do not have. We want water to be allocated per person, not per ‘property.’
9. Affordable Water Tariffs Now.
Free Basic Water and Affordable Water Tariffs for the water we use beyond the free allocation, is the law. The City is obliged to negotiate what is affordable. ¼ of South Africans earn less than 2500 rands per month. Affordable, according to PARI studies, is 5-10% of monthly income. For the majority of households in Cape Town, this would amount to 200 rands maximum for the next 6kl of water used over and above the FBW allocation. We call for a cap at 5% of the households income.
10. The Current Indigent System is not the Answer.
The City of Cape Town claims that “poor” “customers” are exempt from high water prices if they qualify for indigent benefits. Since the 2018 drought, Free Basic Water (FBW) allocation in Cape Town is conditional upon indigent grant registration, which is riddled with problems. It is hard to get, to keep, and to live off of. Less than half of the funds allocated to the City of Cape Town from the National Budget to subsidise services have been received (approx 300 000 households that qualify have not received the benefit). When they do get it, it is hard to keep- it comes with a one time debt cancellation, but it must be renewed every year and is rejected if any debts have accrued. We demand that the City of Cape Town distribute the equitable share of these funds it receives from National Treasury for public services. We demand that water cost relief be de-linked from the Indigent Grant System.
11. Stop punishing and bullying pensioners & Personalise and Humanise Municipal Services.
The elderly are scared they will lose their homes if they do not agree to a water restriction device. We know that these devices will cut our water and that we cannot survive without water. Stop bullying and threatening our pensioners- give them debt relief and let them keep their homes and their free flow taps. They do not have money to pay.
We want to be allowed to make personal arrangements, in person, to pay what we can. We cannot speak to a device and explain that our neighbour was sick. When we go to make arrangements we are told that it is all or nothing. We have nothing.
12. Tax the corporations and the rich.
SAB, Coke, and agroindustry guzzle and export our water as wine, fruit, and juice. They sit on springs and do not pay while we are cut off. We continue to live under Day Zero conditions while corporates which did not adhere to rules during Day Zero continue to profit. 13% of people in Cape Town use 51% of our water. Use regulation to restrict excessive use in wealthy neighbourhoods, and cross-subsidize water services through an increase in taxation on water-guzzling business and through an increase of property tax of the top 1%.
13. Water for Palestine Now. Apartheid anywhere is apartheid everywhere.
Water is being weaponised in the unlawful Israeli blockage cutting people in Gaza and now the West Bank off from water, fuel, medical supplies, and food. As South Africans we stand in solidarity with Palestine and demand, as UN experts have urged, an immediate ceasefire and end to the blockade. We call on the South African government to end all cooperation with the Israeli water and agribusiness industry which is intricately linked to its arms and agribusiness industries and linked to its internal repression, apartheid, and genocide.
14. We stand against the violence of water cut offs, and the repression of water defenders.
The new water policy says it will ‘punish’ any household that goes over the allocated amounts of water. We stand against this brutality aimed at those who already feel the brunt of structural violence every day. This ‘punishment’ of being put on the drip system for one year at a time, violates the human right to water under Chapter 2 of the Constitution, as legislated by the Water Services Act 108 of 1997. It also justifies the market system that puts profit over people, justifies the violence of the water drip system, and justifies using brute force and repression against anyone who challenges these cruelties.
Campaign Successes:
- The movement mobilising for these demands is growing into a constituency with clear politics and practices of supporting each other. There are currently 15 active Water Action Committees involved in this campaign.
- We have been able to keep tens of thousands of water meter’s out of many areas.
- We have been there to defended vulnerable individuals who are punished for their water debts. This includes a 92 year old pensioner who faced a warrant of arrest.
- In July 2021 the City of Cape Town acknowledged the failures of and announced its plans to discontinue the existing Water Management Devices (WMD). 15 years of grassroots organising against the dreaded Water Management Devices, compounded with mobilising during the 2015-2018 drought, resulted in the City of Cape Town acknowledging in 2021 that these devices needed to go. This has been both a win and a loss. The City’s new policy is to replace these discontinued devices with conventional meters equipped with the latest metering technology aimed at poor households. So we continue to fight against these new Weapons of Mass Destruction, and for water justice.
- After years of lobbying against the injustice of mandatory acceptance of a water meter for any Indigent Grant recipients, the City of Cape Town recently shifted its policy so that now all approved indigent applications are not longer required to install WMD in order to benefit from the indigent benefits.
- Through door to door mobilising, connecting self-organised Water Action Committees, linking with other organisations fighting for water and climate justice, feminist solidarities, food sovereignty, agro-ecology, basic income grants, land & housing, electricity, health & sanitation, public education, and safety we will continue to challenge the corporate take over of water and call on our governments to ensure the protection and redistribution of water for life for all.
Our Campaign Needs:
More people power to mobilise and organise with us. We are also looking to expand with:
- Coordinator (joined by AWCC advisory, and the team below)
- Campaigners (lobby, communications)
- Media coordinator & team (support and produce regular newsletter/updates/social media posts, write op-eds, media interviews, etc.)
- Cultural workers
- Researchers/Watch Dogs
Resources to support regular strategic check ins, general meetings, update mechanisms, & actions.
Sources:
- Savelli, E., Mazzoleni, M., Di Baldassarre, G. et al. Urban water crises driven by elites’ unsustainable consumption. Nat Sustain 6, 929–940 (2023). https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-023-01100-0
- Steve Kretzmann, “Cape Town’s water crisis worsened by the rich, study finds,” GroudUp, 12 April 2023.https://www.news24.com/news24/southafrica/news/cape-towns-water-crisis-worsened-by-the-rich-study-finds-20230412
- Tracy Ledger, Kate Tissington, and Alana Potter, Strengthening Municipal Systems for Inclusive and Sustainable Water and Sanitation in South Africa Report (Public Affairs Research Institute, Water Aid, November 2021). Available at: https://pari.org.za/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/WaterAid-Strengthening-Municipal-Systems-Medium.pdf
- Suraya Scheba, “Viewpoint – The South African Water Sector: Municipal Dysfunction, Resistance and Future Pathways,” Water Alternatives, 15(3), (2022), p. 632–649.
- Suraya Scheba, “The influence and impact of commercialization on the South African water sector: municipal dysfunction, resistance, and future pathways,” A report for the Alternative World Water Forum, March 2022
- Suraya Scheba, Faeza Meyer, Koni Benson, Meera Karunananthan, Vanessa Farr and Lesley, Green, “New Packaging, Same Deal: City of Cape Town’s New Proposal to Replace Water Management Devices with the Drip System Will Further Water Apartheid,” Daily Maverick, (10 May 2021). https://blueplanetproject.net/2021/05/12/new-packaging-same-deal-city-of-cape-towns-new-proposal-to-replace-water-management-devices-with-the-drip-system-will-further-water-apartheid/
- SERI, “Turning off the Tap: Discontinuing Universal Access to Free Basic Water in the City of Johannesburg,” (Socio-Economic Research Institute Report, 2018). http://www.seri-sa.org/images/SERI_Turning_Off_the_Tap.pdf
- Steve Kretzmann and Raymond Joseph, “Coca-Cola and Cape Town’s sweetheart Day Zero deal: How big business ignored the water restrictions and got away with it,” Ground Up, 8 May 2020. https://groundup.org.za/article/coca-cola-and-cape-towns-sweetheart-day-zero-deal
- Thamsanqa Mbovane, “Nelson Mandela Bay residents protest high water bills: Water Crisis Committee Leaders says the Municipal Billing System is Flawed,” Ground Up, 29 June 2023. https://groundup.org.za/article/neslon-mandela-bay-residents-protest-over-high-water-bills/
- Nelson Mandela Bay Water Crisis Committee, The Struggle Against Water Apartheid Report (2024) https://blueplanetproject.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/The-Struggle-Against-Water-Apartheid-low-res.pdf
End Water Apartheid Campaign




Stop the Wall Campaign (STW), is a grassroots organization created in 2002 to resist Israel’s Apartheid Wall and its associated regime, including water apartheid.1 They joined forces with South African water activists in 2020 in the lead up to the 2022 Dakar Alternative World Water Forum where they were able to exchange experiences of struggle against a neo-liberal and racial supremacist models of access to water, as well as to strengthen mutual solidarity with other water and climate justice movements.
“In February 2022, 14 grassroots activists from the occupied West Bank launched the #StopWaterApartheid Campaign through support from Stop the Wall.2 The campaign is a continuation of years of efforts to hold Israel accountable for weaponizing water to forcibly dispossess Palestinians from their land. Israel, through Mekorot, its national water company has installed a water apartheid structure controlling over 87% of Palestinian water resources in the West Bank in favor of Jewish settlers. Israeli water apartheid extends to the Gaza Strip by blocking the flow of water from the southern mountains in the West Bank to Gaza. This is compounded with the inhumane Israeli siege imposed on the strip since 2007 and continual brutal bombing of Gaza, where large water installations have been destroyed and contaminated with sewage water. Nowadays, 97% of the water in Gaza is undrinkable.
Under the banner of the Blueprint Project, Mekorot and the Jewish National Fund develop water infrastructure in Al-Naqab exclusively for Jewish settlers.3 Mekorot and the JNF refuse to connect thousands of Palestinian third-class citizens of Israel living in unrecognized villages there to such infrastructure.
Globally, Mekorot and other Israeli agrobusinesses like Netafim entrench the privatization of water and the rural sector in Africa and beyond. Israeli unsustainable water and agricultural projects in Africa enable Israel to fund its apartheid regime; as well as to build relations with heads of states to sell them weapons and surveillance technology. These projects are, accordingly, connected to the solidification of authoritarian neo-colonial and neoliberal regimes in the continent.
Israel is exporting its apartheid methodologies to Africa through unsustainable water projects and through selling weapons and security systems used by regimes in Africa in grabs of agribusiness opportunities.
The exported methodologies developed by Mekorot for a society that sees water a privilege for the few make the Palestinian anti-colonial struggle intersect with the struggle of people in Africa against neocolonialism and the privatization of water resources. As the realization of the human right to water as a common good for all is central to the struggle against colonialism, neocolonialism, neoliberalism, apartheid, patriarchy, among other oppressive structures, a global water justice movement that fights a neoliberal approach to access water should echo and be echoed by our anti-water apartheid struggle in Palestine.”
– Manal Shqair, a fallahi (peasant) Palestinian woman, researcher and climate activist and the past international advocacy officer of Stop the Wall Campaign (STW).
- Factsheet: Cutting the lifeline-Stop the annexation of Palestinian water: https://www.stopthewall.org/resources/factsheet-cutting-lifeline-stop-annexation-palestinian-water/ ↩︎
- #StopWaterApartheid Campaign: https://www.stopthewall.org/2022/03/14/stopwaterapartheid-campaign/ ↩︎
- The Blueprint Project in Al-Naqab: https://www.jnf.org/our-work/community-building/our-blueprint-negev-strategy ↩︎