As World Water Week draws to a close, South African water experts look at the progress the country has made with water accessibility and quality for farmers. Although there has been much progress, some farmers are frustrated with how the government has dealt with water rights.
Chief director of the department of agriculture and rural development in Gauteng, Mncedisi Madolo, said the government is committed to ensure that farmers have access to good quality water as they are food producers who cannot work without it.
“Our farmers utilise expensive water irrigation systems and there is a need to be trained on hydroponics, where they will learn how to use water sustainably.
“That is why as government we think it is best that our farmers practise rainwater harvesting and drilling of boreholes to prepare for dry weather conditions like drought,” he said.
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Still a long way to go
Farmer and water activist Keith Middleton shared his frustrations and said black farmers are still having difficulty with water and land access, imploring the government to make improvements.
“It is more complicated than just having water, because water is allocated to a land. With the government not having a political will in dealing with the land issue, [it has] a very negative impact on irrigation and entrance of black farmers in the farming space.
“About 90% of irrigation water is in white hands that have been licensed by this department and that is protected by the new Water Act of 1998. What we are saying as African Farmers Association of South Africa is that the government must tell us how they are going transfer water to black farmers so that we have what you call equitable access,” he said.
Middleton said land without access to water is fruitless and the government needs to come to the party and engage all stakeholders on how best all farmers will be able to get access to water, particularly those from previously disadvantaged backgrounds.
According to Middleton, should government continue dragging its feet to deal with the topic of access to water, they are opening a gap of corruption. He added that white farmers use Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) to apply for water licenses, and once they get the license they buy out all the black people.
“When it comes to Water Week, we as black irrigation farmers have nothing to celebrate because we have not gone forward but backward in this sector in terms of access to land, access to irrigation water.
“Irrigation costs a lot of money and to develop irrigation lands and run irrigation farms is not pap and vleis, it is big money. Government supports the notion of small-scale farmers that are highly non-profit and non-sustainable, whereas, in farming, the economy of scale makes or breaks the farmer,” he said.
World-class innovators
Environmental specialist Dr Anthony Turton hails South Africa’s progress in making water more accessible for both farmers and community members. He believes the country has shown the most improvement in different innovative technology developments.
“South Africa has always been a country with a huge amount of innovation. One of the areas of great innovation is in desalination technology.”
A desalination plant uses the technology of separating salt from saline water and produces permeate water. This can be done using membrane, distillation, or Ion exchange technology, and more. The most common technology for desalination today is membrane technology.
“For example, the currently accepted reason is that for every unit of water, all the water that goes into desalination plant, one-third of that becomes brine and two-thirds of that become water.
“In that case, there was a 60% recovery rate and the problem with that is when we were faced with severe acid mine drainage in the Mpumalanga province, and at the same time there was huge water scarcity in the Emalahleni,” he explained.
He said the country needs to invest a lot in sewage waste treatment as a lot of them are dysfunctional, “We take water directly from sewage works and treat it to the highest standard possible and recycle it as drinking water, and it was one of the world’s first. Decades later we do not have negative health impacts,” he said.
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