Controversial Draft Regulations Propose Racial Quotas For Water Use

On 19 May 2023, the Minister of Water and Sanitation published draft regulations for public comment on the procedural requirements for the application and amendments of water use licences in South Africa.

The Draft Regulations have introduced the most radical and far-reaching effort by the government to date, to effect demographic change concerning water use in the country by prescribing requirements for achieving equity and redressing past racial and gender imbalances.

Most notably, the Draft Regulations seek to impose racial quotas for the granting of water use licences. This means that licence applications for the extraction of ground or surface water, the storage of water in a dam and the performance of stream flow reduction activities (such as forestry), will now only be considered by the government if the company applying for it meets certain racial quotas. The required percentage of Black shareholding will apparently be determined by the annual volume