Volume II - The Northern Cape Provincial Spatial Development ...

Northern Cape PSDF
Volume 2
December 2011
effect the local regulator, whereas the Provider carries out operation of the system on a
day‐to‐day basis and reports to the WSA.
The primary responsibility for the provision of safe drinking water rests with the Water
Service Authority who has the legal responsibility to:
• Plan (through the Water Services Development Plan)
• Regulate (through the development of bylaws)
• Monitor the quality of drinking water provided to consumers
• Compare the results to national drinking water standards
• Communicate any health risks to consumers and appropriate authorities
Although the Amendment to the Municipal Structures Act assigns WSA functions to the
district municipalities (Category C), the service capacity rests with the local municipalities
(Category B) and thus they continue to be the service providers. Section 78 of the Municipal
Systems Act 32 of 2000, obligates all WSAs to undertake a strategic assessment to determine
how to go about the water services provision function – whether the WSA can carry out the
provision function by itself, or whether it can delegate it to a range of other suitable parties,
be they in the public or private sector.
In the Northern Cape, all local municipalities and district municipalities have been authorised
as both WSAs and WSPs. No other South African Province has this situation. On farms, the
landowner provides water. In the case of the district municipalities, their authorisation is
only for District Management Areas, which tend to be sparsely populated, which makes the
role a relatively minor one. Most of the municipalities in the Northern Cape have capacity
challenges in water services provision.
C.2.4 WATER AVAILIBILITY
The Orange and the Vaal River system are the most relevant in context of water availability
in the Northern Cape Province.
Contrary to popular belief, the Orange River was not named after the reddish orange colour
of its silt‐laden water. It was in fact named in 1779 by Colonel Robert Gordon, the
commander of the garrison of the Dutch East India Company (Cape Town) during a
reconnaissance into the interior, in honour of the Dutch House of Orange. The Lesotho part
of the river is called Senqu, and the whole river is sometimes referred to the as the Orange‐
Senqu. It is also refered to as the ‘Gariep’, a Nama or Korana name that could have meant
‘the river’ or ‘our river’ or ‘the great river’. To the earlier hunter‐gatherers this was the
mother of all rivers. It brought life to the desert areas, but the source of the vast flow of
water was a mystery (Earle et al, 2005).
The Orange River Basin (refer to Map C.5) is an international river basin shared by 4
southern African countries, South Africa, Lesotho, Botswana and Namibia and encompasses
an area of 896 368 km² (Diederichs et al, 2005) making it the largest river system south of
the Zambezi. Approximately 70% of the Orange River Basin is situated in the south‐western
arid to semi‐arid southern African sub‐region, where mean annual precipitation ranges, from
east to west, between 500 and 0mm and evaporation between 2900 and >3500 mm. In the
Office of the Premier &
Department of Rural Development & Land Reform
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Dennis Moss Partnership