Abstract
M.A. (Public Management and Governance)
“Water will be the scarce resources in the 21st century.” This vision was brought to the South African Government’s attention after the Water Research Commission (WRC) conducted extensive research as illustrated in the WRC’s Annual report for 2007/8. According to the WRC, the research aimed to enlighten decision and policy makers to take precautionary measures that will help guarantee that water resources are “protected, used, developed, conserved, and managed in a sustainable manner”. Hence, the Department of Water Affairs and Forestry (DWAF) has started developing the Water Resource Classification System to mitigate the anticipated challenge envisioned. Among others, the WRC’s findings guided the development of this policy. On the other hand, the South African Constitution, 1996 states that, “people have the right to environment which is not harmful to the citizen”. Other legislation, such as the National Environmental Management Act (1998), the National Water Act, 1998 and the Water Services Act, 1997 echoed the same sentiment. The National Water Act, 1998 served as basis for a National Water Resources Strategy as a framework to guide the entire Water Resource Classification System policy process (Chapter 2: Part 1 of the National Water Act, 1998.
Section 195 (e) of the South African Constitution, 1996, highlights that “people’s needs must be responded to, and the public must be encouraged to participate in the policy making”. Thus, the role of stakeholder participation in the DWAF Water Resource Classification System (WRCS) was chosen as a topic for investigation to inform policy makers as well as to identify policy defects. The research project aimed to evaluate the level of stakeholder participation in developing policy, as well as identifying and assessing the nature, influence and levels of their participation. It was established that broad stakeholder participation was a critical success factor during this policy development process.
However, the WRCS was finalised based only on the information gathered from a few stakeholders. It should be noted that when water classification was undertaken the environmental issues were considered in such a way that the classification process does not in one way or another compromise the environment in general and is not detrimental to ecosystems in particular. According to the National Water Act, 1998, water is classified in three categories, namely minimally, moderately and heavily. In other countries water is treated as just another natural resource, but in South Africa water is treated as government’s scarce resource. This study investigated the importance of stakeholder participation as a key to policy development in a democratic state and concluded that better participation would have enhanced citizen ownership and shaping the policy concerned.