Access to water can be interpreted to mean many
different things dependent on the context.
Disconnecting municipal water
When is it illegal for a municipality to disconnect water?
By Chantelle Gladwin-Wood and Maike Gohl at Schindlers Attorneys
T
he South African constitution
guarantees a right of access to
water (but not a right to water
itself). What this means is that the
South African government (through
its municipalities) is obliged to provide
access to water to everyone in South
Africa, where it has the financial and
infrastructural capacity to do so.
The Constitutional Court has
confirmed that the realisation of
this right is dependent on available
resources, which means that there is
no absolute right of access to water
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and no one can simply demand access
to same unless a municipality has the
means to provide it.
Access to water
Access to water can be interpreted
to mean many different things
dependent on the context. In an
instance where a person is living in
an urban environment with pre-
existing water infrastructure (that is,
pipes have already been laid to the
property in question, and it already has
a municipal supply of water), this right
Water Sewage & Effluent March/April 2018
will normally be understood as a right
to receive flow of water through the
municipal pipes.
In a rural context, however, where there
is no municipal infrastructure (or very
little municipal infrastructure) this right
could be interpreted as a right to draw
water from a well or to draw water from a
communal tap or another communal water
source provided by the municipality.
Business consumers
In most municipal jurisdictions,
business consumers are not afforded