26/08/2026
Equality Collective is at World Water Week for the first time this year.
Water is essential to life. Yet across South Africa, whether water will reliably come out of the tap is becoming a major challenge.
As we hear from people working across the world on the water crisis, one issue keeps coming up: finance. How do we fund the scale of investment needed to secure equitable, reliable water services?
In South Africa, this question is particularly urgent. Government is exploring a model with a far stronger role for private finance and private-sector participation in water delivery, while retaining state control of water resources. Given the scale of the infrastructure and governance crisis, it is understandable that people are looking for solutions.
But this is not a technical question alone.
Water is a public good and a constitutional right. Experience repeatedly shows that equitable access depends on strong democratic institutions, public accountability, transparency and meaningful community participation. Private-sector involvement cannot substitute for these things; at best, it can only work within robust public safeguards.
So the questions I am sitting with at the end of day two are these: what checks and balances would be needed to ensure that private involvement serves the public good? What would this mean for rural communities, where commercial returns are least viable, but the need is often greatest? And are we asking the right questions about the path ahead?
There is no doubt that action is needed, alongside real political leadership. But we must go forward with our eyes wide open, centred on the people for whom reliable water remains most out of reach.
