RECOGNISING that National Government is responsible for and has authority over the nation’s water resources and its use;

ACKNOWLEDGING that it is necessary to ensure that, in relation to water resources development at national level, the required national water resources infrastructure must be developed, operated and maintained efficiently and effectively in a sustainable, equitable and reliable manner in order to make water available to water users, and to water management institutions for further distribution;

ACKNOWLEDGING that the current national water resources infrastructure asset base and associated revenue stream could be better utilised to procure funding for the development, operation and maintenance of national water resources infrastructure required for meeting social and economic needs; and

RECOGNISING that a juristic person wholly owned and controlled by the State to administer, fund, finance, implement, develop, alter, maintain, rehabilitate, refurbish, operate and manage the national water resources infrastructure, to provide advisory services relating to such infrastructure and to do all things necessary to fulfil the functions entrusted to it under this Act, including promoting the State’s socio-economic and transformation objectives, must be established to meet the obligations as set out in sections 10, 11, 24, 27(1)(b) and 27(2) of the Constitution in relation to water,

BE IT THEREFORE ENACTED by the Parliament of the Republic of South Africa, as follows:—