Heritage Cases

According to the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa Act 108 of 1996 and the Water Services Act 108 of 1997, Local Government must ensure that all their residents have access to safe water and sanitation. This project forms part of eThekwini Municipality’s Provision of Water and Sanitation to Informal Settlements Programme. Details of the programme are provided in Appendix G1. In South Africa, the Department of Water Affairs is the authority responsible for the formulation of national policy and legislation governing the delivery of water and sanitation. In Durban, the eThekwini Water and Sanitation (EWS) unit is mandated with the implementation of policies under the national legislative framework and therefore is also responsible for water and sanitation service delivery in the municipal area. As such, the EWS unit has undertaken an initiative in 2008 that was originally developed by the eThekwini Health, Architecture and Housing Developments in 2004. The purpose of this initiative is to provide each household with access to basic services pending the formal housing intervention. At a municipal level the over-arching contributing factor that escalated the need for formal water and sanitation was the expansion of the municipal boundary in 2000 in addition to the cholera outbreak in the same year. As such the provision of proper water and sanitation in the informal settlements of the peri-urban and rural areas became a priority for the EWS with Umlazi being one such area. The N4 informal settlement is a small low density settlement with approximately 50 to 75 households thus a single CAB site will be adequate to service this area.