Bill Harding

We often say that water is a critical, finite and essential resource. That much is uncontroversial. What is less often acknowledged is that water does not exist on its own. It comes "packaged" in ecosystems - rivers, wetlands, aquifers and catchments - and its condition is inseparable from the condition of those systems. Yet there is a further, often overlooked inversion that deserves attention, particularly in South Africa's constitutional context. While ecosystems depend on water, the condition of water itself is framed by the condition of the ecosystem through which it moves. Water does not merely sustain ecosystems; it reflects them.

A river, for example, is not simply a channel conveying water from one point to another. It is a living expression of the waterscape and landscape in which it lies. Its flow regime records land-use decisions upstream. Its chemistry and clarity mirror the integrity or erosion of wetlands, riparian zones, soils and vegetation. Its seasonal rhythms speak to ecological resilience, buffering capacity and memory. When a river is polluted, simplified or erratic, it is telling a story about cumulative choices made across space and time. In this sense, rivers function as mirrors. They reveal what has been done to the land.

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In the article below, Bill Harding, specialist consultant in applied aquatic science with expertise in water law, explores the deep legal and philosophical parallels between South Africa’s water and heritage governance.

South Africa’s environmental governance framework is often discussed in fragmented terms. Water law is debated separately from heritage protection. Ecological sustainability is frequently treated as distinct from cultural preservation. Yet beneath these apparently different regulatory domains lies a unifying constitutional philosophy: certain national resources are so fundamental to collective identity, survival and dignity that they cannot be treated as ordinary private property. Instead, they are held in custodianship for the nation as a whole.

Nowhere is this philosophy more clearly reflected than in the National Water Act and the National Heritage Resources Act. Although these statutes operate in different spheres — one ecological and one cultural — both embody a shared constitutional approach grounded in stewardship, public trust and intergenerational responsibility. Understanding this parallel is important not only for legal coherence, but for how South Africans understand the nature of ownership, development and conservation in a constitutional democracy.

At the centre of both water and heritage protection lies section 24 of the Constitution, which guarantees everyone the right to an environment that is not harmful to health or well-being and requires the environment to be protected for the benefit of present and future generations through reasonable legislative and other measures. It bears emphasis that section 24 is entrenched in the Bill of Rights and not merely reflected in ordinary...