Prof. Kader Asmal. Photo: SIWI
Noted South African politician, lawyer and human rights activist, Prof. Kader Asmal, who served as the country’s first post-apartheid Minister of Water Affairs and Forestry from 1994-1999, passed away on 21 June 2011. Aged 76, he died of a heart attack at a private hospital in Cape Town.
President Nelson Mandela appointed Asmal to the “unlikely portfolio” of water affairs and forestry in his new South African government in 1994. According to his close friend Trevor Manuel:
he turned the formerly unremarkable water affairs ministry into the cabinet’s “sexiest portfolio”. He made it assume a leading transformation role by passing the National Water Act and stepping up water provision to poor communities. He introduced the innovative Working for Water project that created employment, saved water and served nature by training and paying people from local communities to eradicate exotic vegetation from rivers and catchment areas.
“Professor Asmal was the main political force behind South Africa’s post-apartheid water policy”, said Jon Lane, WSSCC Executive Director. South Africa’s National Water Act of 1998 was at the time described as the world’s most comprehensive and visionary piece of water legislation.
It incorporates a ‘water reserve’ concept that puts human needs and basic ecological functioning before commercial or industrial interests. The Act also includes water-use rights, an economic instrument which allows the poor pay what they can afford, while forcing water-intensive industry and agriculture to pay more. In addition, the legislation drafted by Kader Asmal state[d] that neighbouring countries are to have an equitable share of water from shared rivers.
