Access
South Africa is one of the few countries in the world that enshrines the basic right to sufficient water in its Constitution, stating that "Everyone has the right to have access to (...) sufficient food and water". However, much remains to be done to fulfil that right.
After the end of Apartheid South Africa's newly elected government inherited huge services backlogs with respect to access to water supply and sanitation. According to one source, about 15 million people were without safe water supply and over 20 million without adequate sanitation services in 1990. The share of the population with access to an improved water source increased from 83% in 1990 to 91% in 2010. Almost 15 million people gained access during that period. However, this remains short of expectations: In his State of the Union address in May 2004 President Thabo Mbeki had promised "all households will have running water within five years". Despite substantial progress, this goal was not fully achieved. In some rural areas, women spend up to one-third of their time fetching water from streams and wells. They are also responsible for using it to cook meals, wash laundry and bathe children.
With respect to sanitation, progress has been slower. According to estimates by the WHO/UNICEF global Joint Monitoring Programme for Water Supply and Sanitation based on survey and census data, the share of South Africans with access to improved sanitation increased slowly from 71% in 1990 to 75% in 2000 and 79% in 2010. In 2010, an estimated 11 million South Africans still did not have access to improved sanitation: They and used shared facilities (4 million), buckets (3 million) or practiced open defecation (4 million). According to Statistics South Africa, access is higher, partially because it includes shared facilities in its definition of sanitation. According to the 2011 census figures, access to sanitation increased from 83% in 2001 to 91% in 2011, including shared and individual pit latrines as well as chemical toilets. The share of households with access to flush toilets increased from 53% in 2001 to 60% in 2011. The health impacts of inadequate saniation can be serious, as evidenced by the estimated 1.5 million cases of diarrhoea in children under five and the 2001 outbreak of cholera.
Read more about this topic: Water Supply And Sanitation In South Africa
Famous quotes containing the word access:
“Whilst the rights of all as persons are equal, in virtue of their access to reason, their rights in property are very unequal. One man owns his clothes, and another owns a country.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The professional celebrity, male and female, is the crowning result of the star system of a society that makes a fetish of competition. In America, this system is carried to the point where a man who can knock a small white ball into a series of holes in the ground with more efficiency than anyone else thereby gains social access to the President of the United States.”
—C. Wright Mills (1916–1962)
“A girl must allow others to share the responsibility for care, thus enabling others to care for her. She must learn how to care in ways appropriate to her age, her desires, and her needs; she then acts with authenticity. She must be allowed the freedom not to care; she then has access to a wide range of feelings and is able to care more fully.”
—Jeanne Elium (20th century)