Petrol, politics and the polls: Unpacking Godongwana’s fuel relief

Chantal Gladwin Wood is Head of Public Law at HBG Schindler's Attorneys. And I'm going to explore this in a little more detail. Because municipal water is unreliable, as I've just suggested, why should the municipality still be entitled to charge me? Explain that. I think the first thing we need to do is just distinguish between the different kinds of charges that can come from a municipality in relation to water and sewer.

One of the charges is where the municipality is providing you with water, and that's a separate, distinct charge to when they charge you for sewer services. So, in terms of our law, if you are extracting water out of a borehole, a municipality doesn't have a right in law to charge you for the water that you're drawing out of the borehole. But if you are putting water that you draw out of the borehole back into the sewer system, which is the municipality sewer system, you are utilizing

Their services and you are burdening their infrastructure, and they are allowed to charge you for that element of the usage of the infrastructure. So, what's happening in Mbombella, and they've done it in one or two other places, is that the charges that homeowners are receiving are not actually to draw the water out the borehole, but rather for the use of the municipal sewer system. Because once that water comes out of tap, it's, I mean, hypothetically could be used to water your garden.

But in most instances, it's used the same way that water drawn from a municipal system would be, and it's put back into the municipal sewer, therefore causing a burden on the municipal infrastructure. So they are allowed to charge you for that. So, how does a municipality then calculate those charges when the borehole water isn't passing through a municipal water meter? Well, that's a fantastic question. So, the short answer is: in some municipalities, when you put a borehole

Down, the municipality requires you to actually put a meter on, and they then read the meter. And so they have accurate records of how much water is going into the sewer. In most instances, however, they don't put a meter. So their bylaws will reserve the right to put a meter but not require it immediately. And if you have a look at the way that sewer charges are calculated by most municipalities across the country, it's actually not based on how much water you put into the sewer, it's typically based on a flat rate. And this

Is what this means is that every residential customer will be charged the same amount of money, let's say 500 rand or 800 rand, depending on where you live, even if you put one kililiter down into the sewer or if you put 200 kililitres down. And there's a lot of controversy about this in South Africa, and a lot of people feel that it's very unfair because it's not in accordance with the standard tariff setting policies which apply in South Africa, which says that the more you use, the more you pay. So there's a lot of fights legally about this.