La politique de l’eau en Afrique du Sud : le difficile équilibre entre développement durable et valorisation optimale de la ressource

politique de l’eau, gestion de la demande, transferts d’eau inter-bassins, protection de l’environnement, aménagement du territoire, afrique du sud This paper questions the sustainability of the post-apartheid water policy in South Africa. Even if they were partly successful in the process of taking into account environmental problems and providing basic water services to previously disadvantaged communities, these policies have raised new problems. This paper shows that the implementation of the environmental Reserve and the water demand management policy have paradoxically accelerated the competition between regions for the access to water resources, and only temporarily stopped the building of huge dams and inter-basin transfers. One major reason is the controversial status of the environment in South Africa, deeply disturbed by the apartheid regime, and still politically and socially problematic