It’s not enough: South Africa’s 25 litres of ‘basic water’ fails its constitutional test

World Health Organization standards suggest that South Africa’s definition of “basic water” is at a level closer to survival than sufficiency. The Constitution demands more.

The Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, Section 27(1)(b), guarantees that “everyone has the right to have access to sufficient food and water.” The keyword is not “access” – it is “sufficient”.

Crucially, the Constitution further requires the state to take reasonable legislative and other measures, within its available resources, to achieve the progressive realisation of this right.

This constitutional commitment does not disappear in legislation – but it is subtly reframed. The 1997 Water Services Act (Section 3(1)) affirms that “everyone has a right of access to basic water supply and basic sanitation.” Similarly, the National Water Act (1998) prioritises water resources of sufficient quantity and quality to meet basic human needs.

The shift is easy to miss, but significant. What begins in the Constitution as a right to sufficient water is translated in policy and legislation into a standard of basic provision.

That distinction matters.

Because in practice, South Africa operationalises this right through a minimum standard of 25 litres per person per day (or six kilolitres per household per month), delivered at a prescribed flow rate, within 200 metres of a household, and with limited interruption of supply.

This number has become normalised. It is often presented as reasonable – sometimes even progressive.

But globally, it sits at the lower edge of what is considered bare survival, not adequacy. At around 20-25 litres per person per day, water access is classified as “basic” – a level at which drinking and cooking may be met, but hygiene is only partially assured, and activities such as bathing and laundry are compromised. Health risks remain high:Source: Domestic water quantity, service level and health

Domestic water quantity, service level and health

It is only at roughly 50 litres per person per day that water access reaches an “intermediate” level – where daily domestic needs, including hygiene, can be met with some reliability.

In other words, what South Africa defines as “sufficient” aligns more closely with what global standards recognise as inadequate for a healthy and dignified life:

This gap is not theoretical. It became visible during Covid-19. On the continent, the country was the hardest hit by the pandemic, with well over a quarter of a million deaths.

The WHO’s public health guidance related to handwashing was unequivocal: wash hands frequently, for at least 20 seconds, under running water. This guidance carried a basic assumption – that water was available in sufficient quantities to support it.

For many South African indigent households in townships and informal settlements, that assumption did not hold.

Take a household of eight. If each person washes their hands five times a day, even conservatively, this begins to consume a meaningful share of daily water use. That is before cooking, cleaning, bathing, or sanitation. The result is a simple but uncomfortable truth: the practices required to stay safe during a pandemic were structurally misaligned with the amount of water deemed “basic”.

The deeper issue lies in how water policy is designed. The Free Basic Water policy allocates water at the level of the household or connection. But water need is experienced at the level of the person, often across large, multigenerational and shared living arrangements. In dense urban areas, a single connection may serve multiple households.

The effect is predictable. Larger, poorer households appear to “over-consume”, not because they are wasteful, but because the system underestimates what they need. What is labelled excess is often nothing more than misclassified necessity. The system is not in tune with the contextual realities of households in townships, for example.

And the response?

Penalty tariffs. Flow-limiting devices. Restrictions that enforce scarcity at the household level. Disconnections may be constitutionally constrained, but constraint itself is actively managed.

The system does not correct itself. It disciplines consumption.

This might be defensible if South Africa were facing absolute water scarcity. But it is not. The country loses close to 50% of treated water through leaks, theft and failing infrastructure. Considering this, the 2025 No Drop Progress Report states that this demonstrates “extreme poor NRW management.”

This is water that has already been captured, processed, and paid for – lost before it ever reaches households. These are billions of rands down the drain.

Scarcity, as I have expressed, is institutional before it is environmental.

Yet the burden of adjustment is placed overwhelmingly on end users – particularly those in low-income communities.

Proponents of the current system will argue that 25 litres per person per day is a minimum guarantee, not a ceiling. Technically, that is correct. But in practice, it functions as both. It is the threshold against which consumption is judged, priced, and restricted. A minimum that is persistently treated as sufficient ceases to be a safety net. It becomes a limit.

And that is where the constitutional question returns.

What does “sufficient” mean in a country marked by inequality, urban density and increasing public health risks? Can a standard that global frameworks associate with compromised hygiene and high health concern reasonably meet that test?

It is difficult to argue that it can.

Revisiting the Free Basic Water policy is, therefore, not about generosity. It is about alignment – between constitutional rights and lived realities, between public health expectations and infrastructure capacity, between policy design and household composition.

Moving toward 50 litres per person per day would not resolve South Africa’s water crisis – nor would it create it. What it would do is shift the baseline: from a standard designed for survival, to one that begins to reflect dignity, health and the realities of everyday life.

More importantly, it would force a broader reckoning.

Not with how little households can survive on – but with why a system that loses nearly half its water continues to ask them to do so.

Because the real question is no longer whether 25 litres is a minimum.

It is whether it can still be defended as sufficient. DM