IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/reorpe/v42y2010i2p175-194.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Can Human Rights Transcend the Commercialization of Water in South Africa? Soweto’s Legal Fight for an Equitable Water Policy

Author

Listed:
  • Jackie Dugard

    (University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, SOUTH AFRICA, jackie.dugard@wits.ac.za)

Abstract

The South African Constitution guarantees the right to water, which is reinforced by a national Free Basic Water policy. However, water delivery is a local government function, which, in the absence of a national regulator, is largely operated as a commercial service. Using the lens of the Mazibuko water rights case—the first South African test case on the right to water—this article examines the conflict between a progressive rights-based model, which views water as a social good, and the commercialized model, which treats water as a source of revenue instead of a public service. The article finds in the legal iterations of the Mazibuko applicants the potential for a new, more equitable approach to water services. This is despite the set-back occasioned by the ultimate legal defeat in the Constitutional Court in late-2009. JEL codes: I31, H41, K32, Q25

Suggested Citation

  • Jackie Dugard, 2010. "Can Human Rights Transcend the Commercialization of Water in South Africa? Soweto’s Legal Fight for an Equitable Water Policy," Review of Radical Political Economics, Union for Radical Political Economics, vol. 42(2), pages 175-194, June.
  • Handle: RePEc:sae:reorpe:v:42:y:2010:i:2:p:175-194
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://rrp.sagepub.com/content/42/2/175.abstract
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Yates, Julian S. & Harris, Leila M., 2018. "Hybrid regulatory landscapes: The human right to water, variegated neoliberal water governance, and policy transfer in Cape Town, South Africa, and Accra, Ghana," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 110(C), pages 75-87.
    2. Schwartz, Klaas & Tutusaus, Mireia & Savelli, Elisa, 2017. "Water for the urban poor: Balancing financial and social objectives through service differentiation in the Kenyan water sector," Utilities Policy, Elsevier, vol. 48(C), pages 22-31.
    3. Herrera, Veronica & Post, Alison E., 2014. "Can Developing Countries Both Decentralize and Depoliticize Urban Water Services? Evaluating the Legacy of the 1990s Reform Wave," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 64(C), pages 621-641.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    right to water; social good; commercialization; water services; South Africa;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • I31 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty - - - General Welfare, Well-Being
    • H41 - Public Economics - - Publicly Provided Goods - - - Public Goods
    • K32 - Law and Economics - - Other Substantive Areas of Law - - - Energy, Environmental, Health, and Safety Law
    • Q25 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Renewable Resources and Conservation - - - Water

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:reorpe:v:42:y:2010:i:2:p:175-194. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.urpe.org/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.