Attack the Problem Not the Data

Sunday Independent

June 15, 2003

By David McDonald

Last year the Municipal Services Project (MSP) released a report which stated that up to ten million South Africans had experienced water cutoffs due to nonpayment of water bills. We linked these cutoffs to the policies of cost recovery and published the report in a book along with qualitative case studies and theoretical chapters on government's rationale for cost recovery. This research has received considerable media attention in SA and internationally - most recently in the New York Times.

It was the coverage in the Times which appears to have prompted the Minister of Water Affairs and Forestry to claim in Parliament, and in this newspaper, that the MSP "considerably over-estimated" the number of cutoffs. Kasrils went on to demand that we retract our claims on the number of cutoffs and called us "phoney revolutionaries" for "misleading working people". This very public and bombastic outburst does nothing to alter our original position on the matter, but it does demand a reply.

First, the statistics. The ten million figure was taken from a representative national survey of approximately 2500 people in July of 2001. Conducted by the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC), in collaboration with the MSP, one of the questions we asked is whether interviewees had ever experienced water cutoffs due to non-payment of bills. Thirteen percent of respondents said "yes".

Water cutoffs affect the entire household, however, and since large, low-income households are most likely to be affected, we extrapolated the data to get a more realistic picture of the number of people impacted by disconnections. This methodology was clearly explained in our report and has been available to DWAF for over a year. At no point has DWAF asked us to discuss or explain these statistics.

We did not release the ten million figure lightly. We noted at the time that the statistics were "startling". And indeed they are, challenging what is, in many respects, an important record of water infrastructure extension in South Africa.

Furthermore, it was not just the HSRC data that we relied on. Statistics collected by the Department of Provincial and Local Government (DPLG) showed 133,456 water disconnections in the last quarter of 2001. This translates to a (conservative) estimate of 500,000 people affected by water disconnections over a three-month period. At this rate, it does not take long to reach the order of magnitude that we indicate in our study.

Nor was it just water that we were interested in. The HSRC survey showed a similar number of people having experienced electricity cutoffs, and the DPLG data showed that 256,325 electricity disconnections had taken place in the last three months of 2001 (affecting about one million people). Telephones were also in the news at the time, with Telkom reporting that it had disconnected 40% of the 2.1 million phone lines it had delivered over the previous four years.

We also conducted qualitative case studies on service disconnections, detailing the social, economic, health and environmental devastation that service cutoffs create. These case studies captured the very palpable anger expressed by old-age pensioners, workers and unemployed youth alike, thousands of whom were taking to the streets to protest what they saw to be cold-hearted and unfair cutoff practices.

Is there room for improvement in our data analysis and collection? Absolutely. As we made clear in the book, this was a first attempt to cover what is a complex and multi-faceted problem. We intend to continue with this work and to share our findings with policy makers and the public.

This leads to my second point. Despite Mr Kasrils' bluster he has nothing substantive to offer in return. If, as DWAF admits, water cutoffs remain a "serious matter of concern" why has the department never researched the phenomenon itself? Our report remains the only national, publicly-available data on disconnections. The DPLG statistics referred to above have never been released to the public (they were leaked to us) and repeated requests by researchers to obtain this data have been ignored.

It is morally reprehensible that DWAF and other government agencies have not been researching the cutoff situation themselves and sharing this information with the public. Apparently they would rather attack academics whose data does not fit their rosy picture of service delivery than do the difficult work of research themselves.

Sadly, the cutoff saga continues, and the new white paper on water services makes it clear that cost recovery remains at the heart of government's water delivery strategy. Those who do not pay their bills will continue to face the wrath of budget-conscious bureaucrats.

"Free services" are just part of this cost recovery continuum. Once the meager supply of free water is consumed, water flows will be restricted or cutoff if not paid for, despite the fact that millions of low-income households cannot afford to pay for the water they need. The city of Durban, the first to introduce free water, is still cutting off as many as 1000 households a day.

All of this is being done in the name of balancing budgets, teaching people to respect the "true" (i.e. financial) value of water, and preparing for the further commercialization of water systems by weeding out "chronic debtors".

In the rough and tumble world of South African politics it is not surprising that our research has come under attack in this way. But the disconnections debate is too important and too tragic to be left to a war of words between politicians and academics. We therefore invite DWAF to work with us to investigate these critical service delivery matters in order to move the debate forward in a more constructive manner.

David McDonald is the Co-Director of the Municipal Services Project

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Report on water cut-off a case of sour grapes among US populists

Sunday Independent

8 June 2003

by Ronnie Kasrils

Would you believe that South Africa's water sector is collapsing? That 10 million people have had their water cut off? That rampant privatisation of water services has caused an epidemic of cholera? It has all been reported in the New York Times and London Observer as well as locally.

None of this true, except the fact that it has been published. The stories are the product of a coterie of "self-proclaimed revolutionaries" who want to make sure that South African transformation follows their prescription. Now their claims are being retracted their motives exposed.

The claim about cut-offs came from a book by David McDonald and John Pape called Cost Recovery and the Crisis of Service Delivery in South Africa, published by the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC). It is based on a 2001 HSRC opinion survey that asked "Has your household ever experienced having your water cut off for non-payment?" Thirteen percent answered in the affirmative.

The authors claimed that there were not many service cut-offs before 1994 because they were both dangerous and politically unwise - although many South Africans remember differently. They imply that their figures reflect current reality rather than history.

The distortion is deliberate. "John Pape" was recently extradited to the United States as John Kilgore on charges related to the Symbionese Liberation Army. He glorified the use of incorrect information in a paper titled "Down with missionaries and objective academics". He encouraged his labour education colleagues not to present facts to help workers their own decisions but rather to "lead" them to support their desired positions and courses of action. I have nothing personal against the man, but misleading working people by withholding concrete facts or deliberately providing them with incorrect information is no basis for long-term political success.

McDonald, a Cape Town-based Canadian academic, directs the Canadian-funded Municipal Services Project with American Patrick Bond from the Wits school of public and development management, who recently sold parliament's portfolio committee that the number cut off could be 13 million.

But the HSRC, which published the report, now says that the claim is not justified by the data. CEO Maria Orkin says that "the figure is a misplaced extrapolation by a researcher of an HSRC survey and considerably overestimates the phenomenon".

>From their survey data and local government information, the HSRC concludes that "a plausible estimate of the number disconnected at any point during that period would have been less than 2 percent of all connected households". But I agree with the HSRC that the extent and consequences of disconnections by local authorities are a matter of concern. Two percent of connected households is more than 250 000 thousand people, far too many.

The constitution and policy of the government do not allow people to be deprived of basic water supplies. Municipalities must restrict flow to the free basic water level rather than cut it off completely. The new white paper on water services will repeat this message loudly and clearly. But we are also seeking to establish effective, democratic local government that can sustain services to our people. If those who use more than the free basic amount do not have to pay the resulting free-for-all will be impossible to sustain and services will collapse.

Is that not what our North Americans populists are seeking to achieve? Unhappy that their status as the true revolutionary leaders is not recognised by a democratic non-racial South African government, they ally with and encourage forces that would destroy it. Their slogan "smash the meter, enjoy the water" tells it all.

These sad men find company with Afro-cynics in the New York Times and the Observer, who also know much better than South Africans how to run a country. They accept claims of rampant privatisation, although only five municipalities, 3 percent of the total, have chosen a private alternative. They accept claims that cost recovery causes cholera, although cholera occurs mainly where people do not have metered services.

Canada-based Public Services International, a global coalition of public services trades unions, supports this campaign and has an obvious interest in opposing privatisation - although many of their members work under private management in places like Britain as I know from my very positive interactions with unions like Unison.

We respect their views and those of their affiliates, the National Education Health and Allied Workers' Union and the South African Municipal Workers Union with whom we work daily, although this is not always reciprocated.

The concerted campaign against South Africa reflects our refusal to accept external prescriptions of "public good, private bad". But we insist that democratically elected local governments consider private service provision although we require them first to consider public alternatives.

We simply demand that whatever arrangement they choose gives priority to meeting the needs of the poor and to the provision of free basic services. We cannot allow disgruntled foreign critics to distort and undermine our development debates to serve their own convoluted agendas.

Of course there are real challenges. Local governments must manage their water services - and restrain people who use more than is reasonable. In many communities, services are still irregular and unreliable - often because some households draw freely through illegal connections, aided abetted by the mindless "anti-privatisation" populists.

So, it is not privatisation that has brought cholera. We are banishing cholera through our provision of clean water and adequate sanitation to our people, with the necessary hygiene awareness. Shortly, we will celebrate the nine millionth South African to be served by a water project built under my department's rural programme.

And yes, the HSRC survey also reports that, when people are asked where they currently get their water, only 6 million are now without safe water. This is where we thought we were in the first place.

Ronnie Kasrils is the minister of water affairs and forestry.