“Break the Meter – Enjoy the Water”
“Break the Meter – Enjoy the Water”
When Johannesburg Water started installing pre-paid water meters in their community in the weeks running up to the World Summit on Sustainable Development (W$$D), residents of Orange Farm in South Africa got a taste of today’s conception of ‘sustainability’: privatisation of basic services (water, electricity, housing), cost recovery policies, tariff increases… For the one and a half million people living in Orange Farm, an informal settlement 50km south of Johannesburg where unemployment reachs 60 to 80%, these policies mean cut-offs and evictions. A harsh reality for an increasing amount of people in the new, neoliberal South Africa.
In August 2002, the pre-paid system for water supply was still in a ‘pilot’ phase, being implemented only in one section of Orange Farm, Drieziek Extension 2. But people didn’t wait to see the pre-paid meters being imposed on the entire population before organizing themselves. The Orange Farm Water Crisis Committee (OWCC) was created by local activists, who started mobilising the community. There were public meetings and mass rallies, but also taxi and church gatherings were used to inform people about the reality of pre-paid meters. And graffiti. Lots of graffiti.
“We had to fight against a lot of misinformation,” says Bricks Mokolo, a member of the OWCC. “Our municipal councillor and its clique were telling the people that the water was ‘pre-paid’, so already paid by the government. And when the Johannesburg Water technicians came in Drieziek Ext. 2 to install the pre-paid meters, they also lied to the residents, telling them they were installing sanitation!”
People living in Orange Farm and elsewhere had high expectations of the 1994 democratic elections. The African National Congress (ANC) promised “a better life for all”, which would include the provision of water, electricity, sanitation and proper housing for their community. And jobs. The 1994 Reconstruction & Development Programme (RDP), drafted by the unions and fully endorsed by the ANC as their electoral manifesto, envisaged to fulfil these two major challenges – simultaneously creating jobs while providing basic services to the vast majority of the population – through an active involvement of the government and public funds.
But Mandela and his government quickly changed their mind. By 1996 Thabo Mbeki, then vice-president, imposed GEAR (the misnamed Growth, Employment and Redistribution), the macroeconomic strategy leading the way to financial orthodoxy with cuts in social spending and privatisations. Facing a huge backlog demand of housing and water and electricity supplies, the ANC believed that no one else other than the private sector could be more efficient to reverse the inequalities left by a century of segregation and apartheid.
Following the policies prescribed by GEAR, the Johannesburg Metropolitan Council initiated its own restructuration. 8 000 municipal workers were retrenched in 2000-2001 after most of municipal services were given to private subcontractors. In January 2001 a new company, Johannesburg Water, was created by the city of Johannesburg and was mandated the responsibility of providing water and sanitation.
Only one month later, in February 2001, a 5-year contract for the management and billing of water services in Johannesburg was obtained by Water and Sanitation Services South Africa (WSSA), a subsidiary of Suez - Lyonnaise des Eaux.
Following the implementation of these privatisation policies throughout the country, the attacks on South Africa’s poor have been out of imagination. In 2000, pre-paid water meters were introduced in KwaZulu-Natal. Facing recurrent cut-offs because they were unable to afford the pre-paid cards, people had no other choice than to get their water from surrounding rivers. The result was catastrophic: 300 people died, and more than 120,000 were infected in the biggest and ongoing cholera outbreak in South African history.
Since 1996, more than 10 million South Africans lost their access to water, a direct consequence of privatisation and cost recovery policies, which has resulted by huge increase of tariffs, sometimes up to 600%.
When OWCC activists heard that Ronnie Kasrils, the Minister of Water Affairs, was coming to Orange Farm on the 1st of October to officially launch the installation of pre-paid water meters all over the township, they didn’t miss the occasion. Strong from their mass mobilisation during W$$D, they organised a mass meeting on Sunday 29th of September, where 3000 people showed up. The message sent to the ANC councillor – who was almost attacked by the community when he appeared at the meeting – was clear: Orange Farm citizens don’t want pre-paid water. “Free Water for All!” or “Break the Meter – Enjoy the Water!”, as graffiti says in Orange Farm.
On the 8th of February 2003, 61-year-old OWCC activist Emily Nengolo paid with her life her fight against water privatisation. At about 1am, two men broke into her house and shot her twice, killing her instantly. The two men didn’t take anything from the house before escaping, neither touch the four other family members who were present in the house and who heard, just before the fatal shots: “This is the one we are looking for…”
by François L'Écuyer
When Johannesburg Water started installing pre-paid water meters in their community in the weeks running up to the World Summit on Sustainable Development (W$$D), residents of Orange Farm in South Africa got a taste of today’s conception of ‘sustainability’: privatisation of basic services (water, electricity, housing), cost recovery policies, tariff increases… For the one and a half million people living in Orange Farm, an informal settlement 50km south of Johannesburg where unemployment reachs 60 to 80%, these policies mean cut-offs and evictions. A harsh reality for an increasing amount of people in the new, neoliberal South Africa.
In August 2002, the pre-paid system for water supply was still in a ‘pilot’ phase, being implemented only in one section of Orange Farm, Drieziek Extension 2. But people didn’t wait to see the pre-paid meters being imposed on the entire population before organizing themselves. The Orange Farm Water Crisis Committee (OWCC) was created by local activists, who started mobilising the community. There were public meetings and mass rallies, but also taxi and church gatherings were used to inform people about the reality of pre-paid meters. And graffiti. Lots of graffiti.
“We had to fight against a lot of misinformation,” says Bricks Mokolo, a member of the OWCC. “Our municipal councillor and its clique were telling the people that the water was ‘pre-paid’, so already paid by the government. And when the Johannesburg Water technicians came in Drieziek Ext. 2 to install the pre-paid meters, they also lied to the residents, telling them they were installing sanitation!”
People living in Orange Farm and elsewhere had high expectations of the 1994 democratic elections. The African National Congress (ANC) promised “a better life for all”, which would include the provision of water, electricity, sanitation and proper housing for their community. And jobs. The 1994 Reconstruction & Development Programme (RDP), drafted by the unions and fully endorsed by the ANC as their electoral manifesto, envisaged to fulfil these two major challenges – simultaneously creating jobs while providing basic services to the vast majority of the population – through an active involvement of the government and public funds.
But Mandela and his government quickly changed their mind. By 1996 Thabo Mbeki, then vice-president, imposed GEAR (the misnamed Growth, Employment and Redistribution), the macroeconomic strategy leading the way to financial orthodoxy with cuts in social spending and privatisations. Facing a huge backlog demand of housing and water and electricity supplies, the ANC believed that no one else other than the private sector could be more efficient to reverse the inequalities left by a century of segregation and apartheid.
Following the policies prescribed by GEAR, the Johannesburg Metropolitan Council initiated its own restructuration. 8 000 municipal workers were retrenched in 2000-2001 after most of municipal services were given to private subcontractors. In January 2001 a new company, Johannesburg Water, was created by the city of Johannesburg and was mandated the responsibility of providing water and sanitation.
Only one month later, in February 2001, a 5-year contract for the management and billing of water services in Johannesburg was obtained by Water and Sanitation Services South Africa (WSSA), a subsidiary of Suez - Lyonnaise des Eaux.
Following the implementation of these privatisation policies throughout the country, the attacks on South Africa’s poor have been out of imagination. In 2000, pre-paid water meters were introduced in KwaZulu-Natal. Facing recurrent cut-offs because they were unable to afford the pre-paid cards, people had no other choice than to get their water from surrounding rivers. The result was catastrophic: 300 people died, and more than 120,000 were infected in the biggest and ongoing cholera outbreak in South African history.
Since 1996, more than 10 million South Africans lost their access to water, a direct consequence of privatisation and cost recovery policies, which has resulted by huge increase of tariffs, sometimes up to 600%.
When OWCC activists heard that Ronnie Kasrils, the Minister of Water Affairs, was coming to Orange Farm on the 1st of October to officially launch the installation of pre-paid water meters all over the township, they didn’t miss the occasion. Strong from their mass mobilisation during W$$D, they organised a mass meeting on Sunday 29th of September, where 3000 people showed up. The message sent to the ANC councillor – who was almost attacked by the community when he appeared at the meeting – was clear: Orange Farm citizens don’t want pre-paid water. “Free Water for All!” or “Break the Meter – Enjoy the Water!”, as graffiti says in Orange Farm.
On the 8th of February 2003, 61-year-old OWCC activist Emily Nengolo paid with her life her fight against water privatisation. At about 1am, two men broke into her house and shot her twice, killing her instantly. The two men didn’t take anything from the house before escaping, neither touch the four other family members who were present in the house and who heard, just before the fatal shots: “This is the one we are looking for…”
by François L'Écuyer
posted by mosca at 11:59 AM
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