An agency who aims to sort fact from fiction, Africa Check, under the editorship of journalist Julian Rademeyer, has taken Zuam to task about this. Rademeyer found that Zuma’s claims cannot be supported by the evidence.
According to Dr Nonhlanhla Kalebaila, research manager for drinking water treatment and quality at South Africa’s Water Research Commission (WRC), she is “not aware of any study done to rank drinking water quality or safety in the world…”
Her colleague, Dr Kevin Murray, research manager for water quality management at the WRC, says he too was not aware of any studyputting South Africa into a handful of countries with the best water in theworld.
Dr Anthony Turton, a prominent water resource management specialist and professor at the University of the Free State’s Centre for Environmental Management, said the claims by the IWMSA sounded “more like propaganda than empiric”.
Now that that one is settled, let’s look at another of the Prez’s wild statements. When Zuma appeared before the Midrand conference of the South African Local Government Association he told delegates the government had outperformed every country in the world over the past 18 years in delivering services to its citizens.
“No country could have produced the delivery we have made in 18 years,” he said.
It’s not rocket science to know this is an outright lie, but again over to the researchers. Africa Check quotes Human Settlements Minister Tokyo Sexwale who said 134,000 houses built under government programmes are collapsing and need urgent repair. In November 2010, he said his department would spend about R2 billion to repair those houses and in May this year told The Sowetan newspaper a further R400 million would beneeded. And if “potable water” is supplied to almost 100% of households, some 264 out of 283 water purification schemes in the country have severe maintenance backlogs, which will cost R10 billion to fix.
President Zuma’s claim that this performance has been world-beating does not stand up.
