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AGRI SA has submitted its feedback on the proposed Water Use Licence Functions, Modification and Appeals Laws that had been printed on 19 Might 2023. The draft laws proposed that sure enterprises making use of for water use licences to take or retailer water would sooner or later should allocate shares of as much as 75% to black South Africans to ensure that such water use licences to be granted. Given the authorized and meals safety implications of the laws, it’s important that they’re reviewed and considerably amended.
Subsequent to the publication of the draft laws, on 15 June 2023, Agri SA had a productive assembly with the Division of Water and Sanitation the place officers clarified that the brand new transformation necessities would solely apply with respect to the 1.5% of water assets in South Africa which haven’t already been allotted. The laws are additionally not meant to use to purposes for the renewal of current water use licences, or to the water use licence purposes which can come up out of obligatory licensing.
Agri SA welcomes this clarification and has included these parameters in our instructed reformulation of the laws. However this vital clarification, Agri SA stays involved that the draft laws, as printed, usually are not in line with the related provisions of the Nationwide Water Act, the Equality Act, and the Structure.
No provision within the Nationwide Water Act empowers the Minister to make laws prescribing substantive necessities for licence purposes or for the willpower of licence purposes. Even when such an influence is inferred, the Act offers that, in issuing a licence, the accountable authority should keep in mind all related components. This features a record of 11 components together with environment friendly and useful use of water within the public curiosity, the socio-economic influence of water use, and investments already made by a water person. The necessity to redress previous racial and gender discrimination is considered one of these 11 components. By legislation, when figuring out an utility for a water licence, the accountable authority should strike an affordable stability between all of the components.
Moreover, the arbitrary and thus legally impermissible nature of racial quotas has already been established by courtroom judgments. Because the draft laws don’t permit for any ingredient of discretion, they’re so inflexible as to be indistinguishable from a quota, and subsequently invalid.
An additional concern is that the draft laws scale back transformation to black possession. Codes of apply issued underneath the B-BBEE Act utilise a scorecard which consists of 5 key components, with possession being just one. The opposite 4 are administration management, expertise improvement, enterprise and provider improvement, and socio-economic improvement. These components must be taken under consideration by the Division.
The inclusion of girls as a beforehand deprived group must also be taken under consideration. Presently, solely racial transformation targets are included within the draft laws.
Agri SA is all too conscious of the historic imbalances that prevail within the farming sector at present, however the sector should obtain equality throughout the rule of legislation. Agri SA has subsequently submitted a proposed reformulation of the draft laws that take the above-mentioned issues under consideration.
It’s important that the trouble to construct an inclusive agricultural sector doesn’t undermine the nation’s meals manufacturing. South Africa is a food-secure nation and should stay one. Agri SA’s submission makes clear that had been the draft laws handed as printed, they might have a probably catastrophic influence on agriculture and the nation’s meals safety.
Agri SA welcomes the engagement of the Division of Water and Sanitation with the sector, and we’ll work with them to ascertain a water licencing regulatory framework that respects the Structure and protects meals safety so as to avert the prolonged litigation which might consequence if the laws had been enacted of their present kind.
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