Cape Town’s water recycling project should not be privatised
Comment on the proposed Faure New Water Scheme closes on 17 April
Theewaterskloof Dam on 24 April 2018. The City of Cape Town wants to build a water recycling plant in Faure to minimise the risk of running out of water during a drought. Archive photo: Ashraf Hendricks
A group of water justice researchers has warned against the City of Cape Town’s proposal to “externalise” the implementation and operation of the Faure New Water Scheme.
The City of Cape Town wants to outsource a very expensive, very risky new water project to turn sewerage water into drinking water, called the Faure New Water Scheme.
The City owns and operates our drinking water supply system and is responsible for ensuring these services meet the human rights obligations enshrined in the Constitution. In line with the Municipal Systems Act, it must also ensure that any outsourcing arrangements do not undermine the public interest.
The City is rightly thinking ahead about long-term water strategies, considering drought, population growth, dam capacity, and climate change. It has committed R3.3-billion to the construction of the Faure scheme, due to come into operation in 2029.
The City is asking for public comment on a proposal to hand over the implementation and operation of the Faure scheme to a private, for-profit corporation. As a group of researchers allied with water justice networks across the Western Cape, we call on the public to reject this proposal to privatise Cape Town’s new water treatment plan, based on decades of evidence of the detrimental social, environmental and health impacts of public-private partnerships in water and sanitation.
We are concerned about the dangers of privatising a critical public service — especially in a city marked by deep inequalities.
High costs and deeper inequity
International experience shows that water privatisation often results in higher tariffs, making water less affordable for low-income communities. It also weakens accountability. How will communities be expected to “cost-share,” and how will a private partner be prevented from raising fees without consultation?
Privatisation introduces profit motives — shareholder returns, executive bonuses, and private financing costs — into water pricing. Instead of being reinvested in infrastructure, revenue is distributed as dividends. Meanwhile public accountability drops. In the UK, shareholders made massive profits while citizens saw bills skyrocket, and nine private company executives earned over £56-million (well over R1-billion) in five years.
The pursuit of profit tends to lead to unequal service provision. Already, about 600,000 households in Cape Town rely on Free Basic Water — an amount which is insufficient for many families, causing immense stress and illness because people can’t afford additional water.
Health and environmental risks
Private corporations are more likely to violate health and environmental regulations to cut costs. Thames Water has repeatedly dumped raw sewage into UK rivers. Veolia, notorious in the US, has amassed over $85-million in penalties since 2000 for 163 violations.
The proposed “toilet-to-tap” direct potable re-use project is new and inherently risky, with limited long-term data. A public-private partnership would only increase the risks. The technology is expensive and untested at scale, making public ownership crucial. The few successful wastewater-to-drinking water projects are all publicly operated: Singapore’s NeWater, Orange County in California, and Old Goreangab in Namibia.
Loss of public accountability
Private companies prioritise shareholders over the public. They’re protected by privacy laws and investment treaties that reduce oversight and weaken governments’ ability to ensure equitable access to services.
Private corporations lack experience in managing sewerage systems. Over 90% of the world’s water services are publicly owned — and 97% of sewerage systems in the US — which reflects a global pattern of public control in this area.
Private firms frequently underperform when managing wastewater treatment plants through “build-operate-transfer” (BOT) contracts. In Brussels, Veolia’s plant failed. When the city withheld payments pending fixes, Veolia shut it down. A 2006 Public Services International Research Unit report documents numerous BOT failures globally.
Private companies also push governments into expensive, unnecessary infrastructure projects under the guise of climate readiness. In Australia, a $20-billion (nearly R400-billion) desalination plant built in 2012 was never used, yet continues to drain public funds.
Making a bigger mess to clean up in the future
Outsourcing public services often backfires. Over the last two decades, more than 1,620 cities in 73 countries have “re-municipalised” their services — reclaiming them from private control. Public Services International has documented how local authorities, citizens, and workers led these efforts to de-privatise and introduce mechanisms of democratic governance, accountability and participation. There are proven public-public partnership alternatives. We should be building those now, rather than letting consultants convince the City it can’t fulfil its constitutional obligation to provide water for all.
Conclusion
The City says it is assessing the feasibility of outsourcing. But feasible for whom, and by what standards? Is it taking into account democratic accountability, long-term affordability, environmental justice? Has it considered full public provision? Shouldn’t this have happened before committing R3.3-billion?
The City claims that grant funding from national government is unlikely. But what’s the basis for that claim? Has it actually approached national government?
Who will own the plant? What happens if the plant becomes a costly white elephant? If private firms rack up high costs, these will be passed on to thepublic through skyrocketing tariffs. And when ownership and decision-making are separated, corruption and rent-seeking can flourish. How will this be prevented?
The City argues it already uses external providers for waste management and transport. But water is not just any service. If water is contaminated or cut off, the consequences are far-reaching. We saw glimpses of this during Day Zero, when outsourced companies installed faulty water meters, later acknowledged to be problematic by the City.
Outsourcing the Faure scheme undermines municipal responsibility. It could set a precedent for the creeping privatisation of Cape Town’s entire water system. We need to acknowledge the entanglement of water and financial power. Inviting corporations into our water systems will only deepen water poverty.
Once water has been privatised, it’s very hard to take back. This could limit the City’s ability to respond to future challenges like climate change or population growth. It would also sap internal expertise, creating dependence on outside consultants instead of building in-house capacity. This would affect maintenance — already a known weakness in existing infrastructure.
What we need is a well-resourced internal (i.e. public) system to ensure access to clean, affordable water for all. Water is a basic human right — not a commodity for corporate profit. The City has a constitutional duty to ensure it stays public. It should strengthen its own capacity to operate and maintain the Faure scheme, ensuring accountability, fair pricing, and long-term security.
We urge everyone to make their voices heard by the 17 April deadline. Say “no” to water privatisation. This can be done in person at any sub council office, by email, or through this online form.
By:
- Dr. Ferrial Adam, Activist Citizen Science: Water and Environment
- Prof. Koni Benson, Associate Professor, Department of Historical Studies, University of the Western Cape and member of the African Water Commons Collective
- Rehad Desai, Uhuru Productions director of Capturing Water
- Dr. Meera Karunananthan, Assistant Professor of Environment and Geographical Sciences, Carleton University
- Dr. Vanessa Farr, co-director of Mycelium Media Collab working on the Water Stories Project team.
- Dr. Cecilia Y. Ojemaye, Research Fellow, Environmental Humanities South, University of Cape Town
- Dr. Nobukhosi Ngwenya, Research Fellow, Environmental Humanities South, University of Cape Town
- Prof. David Hall, Professor at University-of-Greenwich and former director of Public Services International Research Unit (PSIRU)
- Janine Lange, Tshisimani Centre for Activist Education
- Faeza Meyer, founding member of African Water Commons Collective
- Dr. Adrian Murray, Blue Planet Project
- Dr. Suraya Scheba, Senior Lecturer, Department of Environmental and Geographical Science, University of Cape Town
- Sandra van Niekerk, Public Services International (PSI)
Views expressed are not necessarily GroundUp’s.
Support independent journalism
Donate using Payfast
Next: Future of Khoisan settlement in Grabouw hangs in the balance
Previous: There are taps and flush toilets in this Durban township - but no water
© 2025 GroundUp. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
You may republish this article, so long as you credit the authors and GroundUp, and do not change the text. Please include a link back to the original article.
We put an invisible pixel in the article so that we can count traffic to republishers. All analytics tools are solely on our servers. We do not give our logs to any third party. Logs are deleted after two weeks. We do not use any IP address identifying information except to count regional traffic. We are solely interested in counting hits, not tracking users. If you republish, please do not delete the invisible pixel.