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Abstract:
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"Most countries in the Southern African Region have instituted sweeping reforms of their water and land policies as well as the corresponding institutional configurations. These reforms have mainly been prompted by a combination of local factors and shifts in international thinking about water resources management which advocate the promotion of the integrated water resources management paradigm. This paradigm is strongly backed by neo-liberal forces in favor of commercialization and/or privatization, by alarmist voices regarding an impending global water scarcity, and by increasing macroeconomic instabilities in some developing countries. Most of the new water policies stress comprehensive river basin management, stakeholder participation, treating water as an economic good, water demand management, and sustainable water use. The neoliberal orientation of the principles behind the reforms have ensured that the reforms mainly focus on water resources management and sustainable use without paying attention to the rural poor's water needs for productive and domestic uses. Empirical evidence from Zimbabwe and South Africa indicates that the dominance of the management-development dichotomy, combined with the conspicuous absence of an agenda for poverty eradication, means that the reforms make very little sense to rural communities who have been invited to participate as stakeholders in the newly reconfigured water management institutional structures. Rural communities are being asked to commit energy and effort into participating in reform programs that remain highly abstract for them, programs without any apparent tangible benefits for them in the foreseeable future. The water sector reform agenda needs to be re-adjusted so that it includes systematic and targeted poverty alleviation projects for people in the rural areas of Southern Africa. It would be very naive for anyone to assume that statements of intend regarding equitable access to water coming out of the water reform rhetoric and the reconfiguration of the water sector institutions will be sufficient to enable better access to water for the rural poor when no attention is paid to several other factors of production that make the critical linkage between water use and poverty eradication more meaningful and possible."
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