The latest figures from Statistics South Africa are in, showing that “life is somewhat better in the country.”

Water

In 2013 89.9% of South African households had access to piped water. However, only 77.5% of Limpopo households enjoyed such access – but still an improvement over 2002 when only 73.9% of households in this province had access to piped water.

Nationally, 63.2% of households rated the quality of water-related services they received as good. Satisfaction has, however, been eroding steadily since 2005 when 76.4% of users rated the services as good.

Residents of the Free State, Mpumalanga and Eastern Cape have consistently been least satisfied with the quality of water. In 2013, 18.1% of households in the Free State felt that their water smelled bad compared to 12% of Mpumalanga households. Only 1.7% of Western Cape households expressed such a complaint. Free State households rated their water as unsafe to drink (17.3%), not clear (20.1%) and poor tasting (19.7%).

Sanitation

The percentage of households with bucket toilets or no toilets decreased from 12.3% in 2002 to 5.3% in 2013. Households in the Eastern Cape (10%) Free State (7.7%) and Northern Cape (7.4%) were most likely to lack access to toilet facilities or to still use bucket toilets. The percentage of households that have access to improved sanitation facilities, however, improved to 77.9% – up from 62.3% in 2002.

More than one-quarter of households that shared toilet facilities complained about the poor hygiene (25.6%) and poor lighting (25.1%) at these facilities. A further 22% felt that their physical safety was threatened when they had to use the facilities, while 13.1% of households felt that the toilets were not adequately enclosed.

Waste

The percentage of households for which refuse were removed at least once per week increased from 56.7% in 2002 to 63.5% in 2013. Concurrently, the percentage of households that had to rely on their own refuse dumps or communal refuse dumps respectively declined from 31.8% to 29.2% and 3.1% to 1.6%.

Large variations, however, remain between rural and urban areas. While 89.2% of households in metropolitan areas, and 84.3% of households in urban areas could rely on weekly kerbside removal, this was the case for only 6.9% of rural households. By comparison, 86.5% of rural households used their own refuse compared to 9% of urban and 4.2% of metro households.