The South African Municipal Workers Union (SAMWU) has called for this year's world water day to be declared a day of mourning for the millions of people who are sick and dying as a result of not having access to water.
The United Nations chose "water and health" as the theme for world water day on March 22. Nothing could be more ironic in South Africa and across the African continent. People here are becoming more and more unhealthy and dying prematurely because water is now a commodity that only the rich can afford.
Behind the inevitable glib and cheery public relations exercises on that day lies the shocking reality that worldwide, more than 5 million people, most of them children, die every year from illnesses caused from drinking poor quality water.
A shocking new survey has revealed that much of the blame for this must be laid at the feet of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF). Their water privatisation and full cost recovery policies have been imposed as conditions for IMF loans in more than 12 African countries. Negotiated under the IMF's new Poverty Reduction and Growth Facility (PRGF), the conditions are leading to people's water being cut off more than ever before.
The Africa Policy and Information Centre has reported that water privatisation is making water less accessible and less affordable. People are resorting to unsafe water sources. This is clearly evident in South Africa where the number of cholera infections is close approaching 70,000!
In Ghana, the result of forcing the poor to pay "market rate tariffs" for water means that most people can no longer afford water at all. Only 36% of the rural population have access to safe water and just 11% have adequate sanitation within the existing system. Water is also scarce in the capital, Accra. In poor areas of Accra, families are paying almost half their daily wage for 10 buckets of water!
In Angola, there is an agreement that water prices should rise regularly so that the company delivering water can make a "reasonable" profit. In Benin, Tanzania, Guinea-Bissau, Niger and Rwanda water privatisation must be completed by the end of this year for governments to qualify for loans. In Sao Tome and Principe, there will be no further government subsidy of water in the run up to privatisation.
This is clearly ridiculous. In some of the most poverty stricken countries in Africa, unemployed and homeless people who cannot even afford a crust of bread now and then, are expected to fork out one month's food money for a few buckets of water.
In the last month alone in Cape Town and Johannesburg, thousands of people have been disconnected from water they could not afford to pay for. Even permanently employed workers are being forced to choose between food, electricity or water. This terrible reality makes a mockery of world water day.
Even in so-called First World countries like New Zealand, people are being forced to take to the streets against the commercialisation of water. Water activists in Auckland will be protesting on world water day against the city council. The demands of the activists there are that all commercialisation be stopped and water be restored as a public service after hundreds of families were disconnected from water they could no longer afford.
SAMWU will not allow the tragedies that are unfolding in the rest of Africa to be forced on to South Africa.
[This statement was released by SAMWU on March 20.]