NATIONAL WATER AMENDMENT BILL: PARLIAMENTARY COMMITTEE CALLS FOR SUBMISSIONS

NATIONAL WATER AMENDMENT BILL: PARLIAMENTARY COMMITTEE CALLS FOR SUBMISSIONS

• 25 June 2026
• Parliament
• SA Legal Academy

Please note: 1) On 2 July 2026, the notice was eventually posted on Parliament’s website. 2) On 15 July 2026, the committee issued a media statement reminding stakeholders of the importance of public participation in the law-making process. According to the statement, in anticipation of nation-wide hearings Parliment intends conducting ‘a series of educational programmes on the Bill to empower communities with the necessary information to make informed and meaningful submissions’.

The National Assembly’s Water & Sanitation Committee has issued a notice calling for written submissions by 30 July 2026 on the National Water Amendment Bill, which was tabled in January 2026. Published on the Parliamentary Monitoring Group (PMG) website, the notice has yet to be posted on the Parliament’s official site.

A memorandum on the Bill’s objects notes, among other things, that its overarching objective is to ‘ensure that the nation’s water resources are protected, used, developed, conserved, managed and controlled in a sustainable and equitable manner, for the benefit of all persons’.

To that end, it seeks to:

• strengthen measures for protecting and conserving the country’s water resources
• facilitate departmental procedures for considering water use applications
• further empower the department to implement water allocation reform by:
  • improving ‘equity in water use allocation’
  • phasing out ‘previous water entitlements’
  • promoting the efficient use of water, and
  • ensuring that water user associations are fully representative and adhere to good governance principles.

Please click the links below for more information:

• Bill
• PMG notice

Published by SA Legal Academy Policy Watch

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