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SOUTH AFRICA

The country is facing one of the fallouts of the racist laws of the apartheid regime in the form of severe water shortage. The government is planning to reform obsolete water laws which gave exclusive rights to private landowners and industrialists with the result that today, the greater portion of the nation's usable water is controlled by a small number of landowners.

More than 65 per cent of the nation's usable water is either privately-owned or used under rights guaranteed by outdated laws, some of which date back 300 years. Increased pumping of groundwater, dryland and rainfed farming and mushrooming of small dams on farms, have resulted in a huge decrease in the water that reaches South Africa's rivers.

The government is now undertaking a review of laws that allow 'private water' and 'riparian' rights to commercial farmers. Experts feel that even if the farmers reduce one per cent of water wastage, it would meet the basic needs of nine million people.

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