Capturing Water 

Al Jazeera (2025)

Film Review

https://www.aljazeera.com/video/featured-documentaries/2025/4/16/capturing-water

South Africa, a prime example of “racist capitalism,” is recognized as the most unequal country in the world, with Capetown the most unequal city. One of the water activists profiled here blames this on the decision not to return the land – nor the access to water – to the indigenous Africans it was stolen from.*

In 1994 when apartheid ended, 40 million South Africans had no reliable access to clean water. As of 2019, that number had dropped to to 21 million

In Capetown 600,000 homeless people of color are still waiting for social housing while private real estate development is booming. Thirteen percent of Capetown residents use 51% of the city’s water on their lush gardens and landscapes and face no restriction on its use nor pressure to conserve. Water intensive export industries (eg beer, wine, juice, bottled water) also have unlimited access to water. All the city’s water conservation efforts are directed at the poor.

South Africa’s grassroots PHA Food and Farming Campaign also focuses heavily on ending water wastage and updating the city’s failing water infrastructure. A prime example of water wastage is using pristine mountain streams (at a rate of 55 million liters daily) to flush sewage and other waste into the ocean.

Private companies routinely dump their waste in Capetown’s freshwater streams to avoid paying for processing. Meanwhile the condition of 67% of the city’s waste water works is rated a poor to critical. The city routinely warns residents to boil their water (impossible in many low income households who can’t afford the extra electricity/gas).

Activists blame Capetown’s failure to upgrade their waste water systems in part on low property taxes (a city with the most valuable properties in South Africa has the lowest tax revenues) and in part on outsourcing waste management and fresh water distribution to private companies.

The current Capetown mayor plans to reduce the city’s ownership of fresh and waste water management from 80% to 35% over the next 10 years. This trend has led many European companies to eye water management in the global South as the new gold.

*As the late John Pilger outlines in Freedom Next Time, Nelson Mandela was released from prison in December 1988 to live in the warden’s home until his official release in February 1990. During that period he met with numerous international officials and was pressured to to commit the first ANC government would 1) refrain from prosecuting Apartheid officials who had committed crimes against humanity 2) allow white South Africans to keep their land 3) repay South Africa’s IMF loan.