South Africa is the fourth largest country in Africa, with a surface area of more than a million square kilometres and an estimated population of 48 million.

The country is water stressed and drought prone, and remains among the top 30 driest countries in the world, with an annual average rainfall below 500mm. It gets most of its water as surface water, and the rest is groundwater and reuse of return flows.

Water Affairs and Forestry Minister Lindiwe Hendricks says the demand for water in South Africa has been increasing.

“With greater requirements in agriculture and industry, and more people being given access to water, we expect the demand to continue growing.”

From the year 2000, when South Africa’s annual water requirement was about 12,900 million cubic metres, projections of water consumption patterns led the country to expect a demand of 14,200 to 16,800 million cubic metres by the year 2025.

The plumbing industry is seen as crucial to South Africa, given the increased focus on saving water. The Institute of Plumbing launched a plumber registration program this year, to make sure the wet services industry gets skilled professionals.

However, publishing editor of Plumbing Africa magazine Rory Macnamara says politics has had a negative effect on standards and skills.

“Since democratization of South Africa, the politicians made the mistake the rest of Africa keeps on making, that is, everything must become black. Affirmative action became the order of the day and simply created an exodus of professional and trade skills.

“The industry has committed itself to the transformation process, but the starting point is training.

“Because of the poor education given to the black population under the previous government, these folk simply could not step into the training arena and become plumbers and technicians. The learning gap and basic language problem just did not enable this.”

The Government did revamp an existing trades training program, but Macnamara says it still needs time to develop. It has not received wide support in the industry because the high level of theory resulted in new plumbers being seen as having insufficient practical experience. There is also a complicated rebate system for taking on learners.

However, the South African Institute of Plumbing has a “vital initiative”, with sponsorship from the German Technical Co-operation that will review and develop plumbing qualifications.

“This is a good sign, in that they will look to consolidate the different plumbing courses into one and have a process whereby all plumbers are taught the same and receive the same qualification,” Macnamara says.

South Africa is an urbanizing nation. Almost 60% of the population (28 million people) live in more than 3,000 urban communities, including shanty towns (also known as informal settlements). The scattered and rapid growth of shanty towns is a big challenge in providing adequate water services and infrastructure.

The nine largest cities have a combined population of 16 million, and cover only 2% of the country’s surface area. Almost 75% of rural communities depend entirely on groundwater, even though this represents only 9% of available resources. Nine million people still lack access to water, 64% of them living in rural settlements. Sixteen million have no basic sanitation facilities.

South Africa is struggling to transform itself from a country of political and racial oppression to a democratic nation with equal rights for all. The unequal water access of the past under apartheid is being tackled with the 1998 National Water Act, which governs the access and licensing of water.