Waterpartially implementedMedium TermOperation Vulindlela / SONA 2026

Water-Use Licence Reform: Streamlining the Application System

Theme: water_governance

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Assessment

Growth Impact4/5

Feasibility3/5

Responsible: Department of Water and Sanitation

Feasibility Assessment

Programme design is sound and internationally recognised. Constraints are fiscal (insufficient grant allocations), institutional (metro capacity, surveyor-general bottlenecks), and political (local resistance to in-situ upgrading near well-located land). Scaling is feasible if paired with conditional grant reform and metro accountability frameworks.

Description

South Africa's water-use licensing process — administered by the Department of Water and Sanitation (DWS) under the National Water Act (1998) — is a severe administrative bottleneck constraining agricultural expansion, mining, and industrial investment. Licence applications routinely take 3-7 years to process; the backlog at DWS exceeded 4,000 applications as of 2024. Operation Vulindlela identified water-use licence reform as a Phase II priority, targeting: full digitalisation of the National Water Resource System (NWRS) application platform; delegation of lower-risk licensing decisions to Catchment Management Agencies (CMAs); and introduction of deemed-approval provisions for applications meeting defined minimum criteria within 90 days.

"The presentations highlighted progress in informal settlement upgrading, housing projects such as Banana City; [but] Members expressed frustration about the lack of cooperation from municipalities and the pace of delivery." — Portfolio Committee on Human Settlements, March 2026