Opinion | Water justice

Every Women’s Month, South Africa celebrates the courage of the 20000 women who marched to the Union Buildings on August 9, 1956. Seventy years later, that historic protest against the pass laws has become one of the defining moments in our democratic consciousness. The struggle for women’s equality is no longer confined to the legal barriers that characterised apartheid.

Today it is measured by whether every woman can fully exercise the rights guaranteed by our Constitution, whether every girl can attend school without interruption because she has access to safe sanitation, whether mothers can pursue economic opportunities instead of spending hours collecting water and whether grandmothers can age with dignity rather than carrying heavy buckets to sustain their households. This is why access to water and sanitation is not merely an infrastructure issue but one of the defining social justice questions of our democracy. The debate often focuses on dams, treatment works, pipelines and engineering.

These investments are indispensable, but they are a means to an end: Expanding human freedom. Reliable access to clean water enables health, education, productive work, food security and human dignity. Without it, many of democracy’s promised freedoms remain beyond reach.

[paywall]

For women, this reality is even more profound. Across the world, water poverty is experienced as gender inequality. According to the United Nations, women and girls collectively spend about 200 million hours every day collecting water.

In sub-Saharan Africa, they undertake around 70% of household water collection. Behind these figures lies an uncomfortable truth: Where water systems fail, women compensate with their labour. Every hour spent collecting water is an hour not invested in education, employment, entrepreneurship or civic leadership.

Every sanitation failure increases unpaid care responsibilities, while every interruption to water supply reduces women’s economic participation and reinforces poverty across generations. The consequences are especially severe for young girls. The World Health Organisation and Unicef have shown consistently that access to safe water, sanitation and hygiene directly improves school attendance, educational attainment and health outcomes.

Water justice is therefore inseparable from gender justice. This principle is deeply embedded in our constitutional order. Section 27 guarantees everyone the right to sufficient water.

Section 10 protects human dignity, while Section 9 affirms equality before the law and prohibits unfair discrimination. These rights are mutually reinforcing.

[/paywall]