By Bankole Thompson, The Michigan Citizen, 4 February 2003
PLEASE NOTE: Readers wanting to reproduce and reference this article should contact The Michigan Citizen
While 30,000 Detroiters battle water, heat and electricity
shutoffs, masses of South Africans are taking to the streets in
Johannesburg, where the government is privatizing water and other
essential services.
Protestors filled the streets throughout the past week, demanding
a halt to the sale of public, government-run water utilities to
private companies.
“There is a correlation between what is happening in Detroit
and Johannesburg,” said Robert Bartle, organizer for the
Sweet Water Alliance, a network of people opposed to water
privatization. “Both are economic problems that put the
water system in a disarray.”
Opponents say water privatization leads to rate increases, which
in turn cause people to collect dangerous, even lethal water from
untreated sources.
“In South Africa, the introduction of the prepaid water
meter forced people to look for water from other sources, when
sometimes those are contaminated sources,” Bartle said.
Bartle said using water meters allows private companies to shut
off residents’ supply when they fail to make their payments.
Maj Fwil-Flynn, policy analyst for Public Citizen, a consumer
advocacy group in Washington, said the advent of the water meter
had severe consequences for the lives of ordinary South Africans.
“Two-hundred and fifty-nine people died of cholera as a
result of that, and 10,000 got sick between August 2000 and
February 2002,” Fwil-Flynn said.
Fwil-Flynn, who has lived in South Africa, said the country’s
current water crisis is a legacy of the previous administration,
of Nelson Mandela.
“This started with the Growth Employment and Reconstruction
Program in the Mandela government, which focused on
privatization, bringing investors to the country,” said
Fwil-Flynn, adding that Mandela’s successor, President Thabo
Mbeki, only perpetuates the problem. “He seems totalitarian
and insensitive to any criticism,” she said.
Like the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights,
the South African constitution enshrines the notion that access
to water is a citizen’s right.
Holly Wren Spaulding, who was recently in Johannesburg as a
delegate for the Sweet Water Alliance, said many South Africans
must contend with water shutoffs despite the constitution.
“The disparity between the wording of the constitution and
the fact that people’s lives are on the ground has to be
reconciled,” said Spaulding. “Many have no light,
water, or heat.
“Lifts don’t work, and the elderly languish on the
upper floors of these buildings, hopeful they will not need to
exit in a hurry.”
The companies taking charge of water supplies are motivated by
profit, said John Hilary of Save the Children, a British
organization. “Private water companies don’t go into
countries with thoughts of doing the poor a good turn,” he
said.
Hilary said the privatization of water supplies in Argentina by a
French company, for example, led to a 100 percent rate increase.
In South Africa, about 10 million people were cut off from water
and electricity in 2001. The government has recently charged 87
activists with malicious damage, said Fwil-Flynn, for protesting
against shutoffs, at the residence of Amos Masondo, Johannesburg’s
mayor.
The activists had gathered at the mayor’s villa to shut his
water off, when guards opened fire on them, wounding two of the
activists, said Fwil-Flynn, though she said no charges have been
brought against the guards.
Opponents of the private ownership of water supplies say access
to healthful water is an inviolable human right that should be
guaranteed under any privatization agreement.
“In fact, a recent court in Brazil made it illegal to shut
off water because of the health concerns there,” said Sarah
Grusky, coordinator of the international water-working group at
Public Citizen.
Grusky said the group is putting together a legal team to combat
Detroit’s own water crisis, which she described as “inhuman”
and “unbelievable”.
“We have to have some policy that makes water available to
people,” said Grusky, “and we are investigating to see
what the water procedural rights and policies are in Detroit.”