From Water Access to Water Agency

This idea is not yet agreed. Kwaxala has been approached and has said it wants to work with the valley (see below). The other organisations named on this page have not yet been asked. They include the Department of Water and Sanitation, the Breede-Olifants Catchment Management Agency, the Zonderend Water Users Association, the City of Cape Town, the Transformasie Komitee, and the Moravian Church. Please do not share this page publicly yet. The idea will be tabled at the Forum’s November 2026 meeting, with the Learning Campus and Restoring the River.

What the letters in square brackets mean

Facts on this page are followed by a tag that shows where they come from.

• [IC] Independently Corroborated. Confirmed by at least two sources that do not depend on each other, or by an official record.
• [MS] Mission-Sourced. Comes from the people putting this idea forward, or from the organisation the sentence names, in their own documents or statements. It has not been checked against other sources.
• [TBV] To Be Verified. Seems likely, but nobody has confirmed it yet.

Statements without a tag are proposals. They describe what the idea could become.

The goal

By 2038 the valley earns a living from the water its own land regenerates, on terms it helps to set, and that water eases what Theewaterskloof Dam must send downstream.

From access to agency

The Forum’s food work is moving from food security to food sovereignty [MS]. That shifts the question from access to agency: from whether people can get food to whether the community can feed itself on its own terms, from its own soil and by its own decisions. See Agriculture and Food Sovereignty.

This page makes the same shift for water. Today decisions about the valley’s water are made elsewhere. The Department of Water and Sanitation runs Theewaterskloof Dam and the scheme that shares its water [IC]. The question for the valley has been how much water it can get.

Water agency asks what the valley can do with the water its land gives. Its mountains and streams feed the Riviersonderend below the dam [IC]. Restored, they could give more. A valley with agency regenerates that flow through its own land and skills. It takes part in deciding how the flow is shared, and it is paid for what it adds to the river.

Agency here works inside the law. The state holds all water in trust, and the Reserve for people and rivers comes first [IC]. The valley’s agency lies in how it cares for its land, and in the agreements it makes about the water that land gives.

The BioConomy work calls this the move from needy to needed [MS]. Here, being needed means offering something others depend on: more water in the river, measured and proved. See Needed vs. Needy.

From Kwaxala, which represents investors:

“The key thing is that if you can create a revenue stream that is predictable and you can ensure it is being received by those that are protecting and regenerating the ecosystem that makes it possible, you end up with a revenue-generating project that is investable. Our investment mechanism just magnifies the investable asset value of a project of that type, and the end result of that is upfront capital to help establish it in the first place and more revenue and value being retained by the community doing the actual work over time. Part of the reason we can magnify so much is that the investors we engage with are happy to accept lower returns because they are accompanied by high non-monetary impact returns such as community ownership and ecosystem restoration and protection.” - September 29, 2026

Why the valley needs it

One dam, three calls on its water

Theewaterskloof Dam holds up to 480 million cubic metres, more than any other dam that supplies Cape Town [IC]. Its water goes two ways:

• West, through a tunnel, to Cape Town and to other towns and farms in the Western Cape Water Supply System [IC].
• East, down the Riviersonderend, past Greyton and Genadendal. Farmers along the river are entitled to water released from the dam, and so is the Overberg Water Board, which supplies Caledon and other towns [IC]. The Riviersonderend joins the Breede River near Swellendam, and the Breede reaches the sea at Witsand [IC].

In the 2018 drought, the farmers along the Riviersonderend received only 60% of their allocation from the dam [IC].

The law puts the river first

The National Water Act makes the national government the public trustee of the country’s water, so nobody owns it [IC]. The Act sets aside a first share called the Reserve: water for people’s basic needs, and water to keep rivers and estuaries alive [IC]. Every organ of state must give effect to the Reserve when it makes decisions about water [IC].

In August 2022 the Minister set the Reserve for the Breede and its tributaries, including the Riviersonderend [IC]. Some of the figures that matter to the valley [IC]:

Place	Present condition	Target condition	Water it needs, as a share of its natural flow
Riviersonderend, measuring site 5	D (largely changed)	D	24.5% of about 414 million cubic metres a year
Baviaans River, Genadendal	B (largely natural)	B	70.9% of about 8 million cubic metres a year
Gobos River, Greyton	C (moderately changed)	A (natural)	48.1% of about 12 million cubic metres a year

The estuary at Witsand now receives about 42% of its natural flow [MS]. The province’s draft plan for the estuary says this loss of river water is the biggest reason its condition has declined. It also says that large volumes of water could not be given back to the estuary, so its target was kept at B (largely natural) [MS].

Not enough water to go round

Provincial and national officials say the Western Cape Water Supply System is over-allocated: even with full dams there may not be enough water for every user [MS]. They also say farm water is already fully allocated [MS]. The national strategy for the system called in 2007 for a programme to phase in the Reserve, and said that water trading would be supported [IC]. Whether the Reserve is now met below Theewaterskloof, and whether the dam releases water for it, has not been confirmed [TBV].

Invasive trees take the valley’s water

A 2016 study estimated that invasive plants reduce the flow of rivers in the Breede and neighbouring catchments by more than 6% of their natural flow [TBV]. Clearing them puts water back into the streams [IC]. The valley’s streams, the Baviaans and the Gobos among them, run into the Riviersonderend below the dam [IC].

The valley has protected its water before

In 1899 the Moravian Church bought the mountain farm Langgezocht, about 1,881 hectares, to protect the water sources of Genadendal [MS]. Since 1854 Greyton’s leiwater furrows have carried water from the Gobos River to the plots that hold a water right [MS]. See Greyton’s Leiwater.

The idea

How the valley’s water could ease the dam

Theewaterskloof sends water down the Riviersonderend for the farmers along the river and for the Overberg towns [IC]. Once the Reserve is fully in place, the river will also need enough water for its own health and for the estuary. Every cubic metre the valley’s own streams add to the river below the dam is water already in the river. Where it arrives at the right place and the right time of year, the dam might need to release less to meet the same needs. The water left in the dam could then go through the tunnel to Cape Town.

The valley would add water by restoring its catchments: clearing invasive trees on the mountain slopes and along the streams, and restoring wetlands and springs. The skills for this work, including how to measure and prove the results, are set out in Restoring the River.

This route works only if the people who run the dam agree to count the valley’s water. That agreement would be the heart of the idea.

Why this could be bankable

A service is bankable when a bank or investor will put money into it today, because they trust it will pay back over time. Four things make that trust possible:

1. A buyer who pays for the result, such as the City of Cape Town, a water fund, or a bond.
2. A result that can be measured, such as extra water in the river, recorded at gauges and checked by someone independent.
3. A clear right to do the work, such as long-term stewardship agreements with the owners of the land being restored.
4. A trusted body in the valley that signs the contracts and delivers the work.

Buyers of this kind already exist. In April 2026 FirstRand Bank listed a R2.5 billion bond on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange that pays investors partly according to checked results from clearing invasive plants in Cape Town’s catchments [IC]. In the Breede catchment, a water stewardship programme led by WWF and Woolworths reports releasing 200 million litres of water a year back into the catchment [MS].

Learning from Kwaxala

Kwaxala describes itself as an Indigenous nature regeneration network [MS]. It buys existing rights to log forests, turns them into rights to regenerate the forest, and returns the forest to the care of the Indigenous Nation whose land it is [MS]. Its first project covers about 55,000 hectares in British Columbia, Canada, with the Kwiakah First Nation [MS]. Income comes from carbon credits and other services the forest provides, and investors can buy what Kwaxala calls Living Forest Shares [MS]. It says its model can be used anywhere, on public and private land [MS]. Kwaxala is majority owned by its Indigenous partners, and it says more than 90% of the revenue from each forest stays in the local community [MS]. The Valley of Grace BioHub already names Kwaxala as a model to learn from [MS].

In September 2026 Pete Corke, Kwaxala’s Director of Vision and Leadership, told the Forum’s convenors that Kwaxala wants to work with the valley [MS]. The aim would be to take existing water rights and turn them into rights to regenerate the river’s flow, in the same way Kwaxala has turned logging rights into rights to regenerate forests [MS].

Doing it within South African law

Water in South Africa works differently from a Canadian logging licence. The state holds all water in trust for the nation, and an entitlement to use it can change hands only with the approval of the water authorities [IC]. Nobody has yet worked out how Kwaxala’s model would fit these rules. Three routes could be tested:

• A delivery contract. A long-term agreement to add a measured amount of water to the river, paid for by a buyer when the result is checked.
• Stewardship rights over land. Long-term agreements to restore and protect the mountain catchments, with the income from the water they give.
• Water rights turned into rights to regenerate flow. This is the route closest to Kwaxala’s own model. The Act lets a holder of a water entitlement give up part of it so that the water can be used under another licence [IC]. It also lets a water management institution allow irrigation water to be used for another purpose for a time [IC]. A valley body could pay willing holders to use these provisions, so that water stays in the river and the regenerated flow becomes an asset that earns income. Every step would need the approval of the water authorities.

Learning how to do it

Working this out would be new in South Africa, and the valley would learn it by doing it. The people who take part would learn how water rights are held and checked, how they can be transferred or given up, how to apply for a licence, how to write stewardship contracts, and how investors such as Kwaxala’s are brought in. That learning would become part of the water theme of the Learning Campus, set out in Restoring the River.

Who would benefit

• Workers in the valley, who would be paid to restore and monitor the catchments.
• Landowners, including the future owners of Farm 39 land, who could earn from caring for their land.
• Farmers along the Riviersonderend, who would have more water in the river in dry months.
• Cape Town, which could have more water in Theewaterskloof.
• The river and the estuary at Witsand, which depend on the water that reaches them.

Who would pay

Nothing has been costed [MS]. Possible sources:

• Water users who gain, through a water fund, a bond, or a contract with the City of Cape Town.
• Investors, if the service can be turned into an asset they can hold.
• Companies with water stewardship programmes in the Breede catchment.

Who would decide

• The Department of Water and Sanitation runs Theewaterskloof and the scheme that shares its water [IC]. It would have to agree to count the valley’s water.
• The Breede-Olifants Catchment Management Agency manages water use and licensing in the Breede catchment [MS].
• The Zonderend Water Users Association represents the water users on the river [MS].
• Landowners decide what happens on their land. Anything on Farm 39 land, and Farm 39’s own water, would go to the Transformasie Komitee first.

How it fits the Forum’s goal

The Forum’s long-term goal names clean rivers as one of the things nobody pays for today, and plans a BioConomy that keeps water in the ground and value in the valley. This idea would let the valley be paid for water it gives others, and give it a say in how that water is shared.

It follows the three values of the long-term goal:

• Cooperation (economic). The valley sells a service others need.
• Equality (civic). The Reserve comes first, and water stays held in trust for everyone.
• Freedom (cultural). The valley decides how it cares for its own land, and learns the skills to do it.

It serves three of the Forum’s priorities: Education and Skills, Conservation and Environment, and Business Development and Local Procurement.

What is still open

• Whether the dam’s operators would count the valley’s water. The whole idea depends on this. The Department of Water and Sanitation and the catchment agency have not been asked.
• Whether the dam releases water for the Reserve today. If it does not, easing that duty frees no water in the short term.
• Where and when the water arrives. Water from the valley’s streams can help farmers and measuring sites below where the streams join the river. It cannot help anyone upstream. It would also need to arrive when the dam is releasing water, which is mostly in the dry months [TBV].
• The streams’ own needs. The Reserve sets targets for the Baviaans and the Gobos too, and asks the Gobos to improve from C to A. Extra water from restoration may first be needed to meet those targets.
• How much water. No study has measured what restoring the valley’s catchments would add to the river [TBV].
• Leiwater and other existing rights. How the idea would affect water rights already in use, such as Greyton’s leiwater and the farmers’ allocations.
• Farm 39 and Langgezocht. Who holds Langgezocht today, and the Transformasie Komitee’s view on Farm 39’s water. Neither has been asked.
• The legal route. Which provisions of the National Water Act could turn an existing water right into a right to regenerate flow, and whether the water authorities would approve it. The allocations on the Riviersonderend come from a government water scheme, and how these can be transferred has not been checked [TBV].
• Kwaxala’s role. What form a partnership with Kwaxala would take, who in the valley would be its partner, and whether its investors would fund water.
• Other partners. Whether the City of Cape Town, the bond’s organisers, or WWF would be interested. None has been asked.

What happens next

1. The Zonderend Water Users Association, the Transformasie Komitee, and the Moravian Church are asked for their views.
2. The idea is tabled at the Forum’s November 2026 meeting.
3. If the Forum wants to go further, it works with Kwaxala to map the legal route, and asks the Department of Water and Sanitation and the Breede-Olifants Catchment Management Agency whether water added below the dam could be counted.
4. The valley begins measuring its streams, so that it has its own record of how much water they carry.

Have your say

Contact the moderators via How to Submit, or come to the November meeting.

Related

• Restoring the River: Water Skills at the Learning Campus
• Agriculture and Food Sovereignty
• Valley of Grace Learning Campus
• Zonderend Water Users Association
• Wild Restoration
• Greyton’s Leiwater
• Conservation and Environment
• City of Cape Town
• Organisations Outside the Valley
• Our Long-Term Goal
• Ideas for the Valley

References

On the law and the Reserve:

• Republic of South Africa. National Water Act 36 of 1998. Section 3 (the state as public trustee), sections 16 to 18 (the Reserve), and section 25 (giving up or transferring water entitlements).
• Department of Water and Sanitation. Reserve determination for water resources of the Breede-Gouritz Water Management Area. Government Gazette 46798, Notice 2428, 26 August 2022. Table 4.1, the figures for the Riviersonderend, Baviaans, Gobos, and lower Breede.

On Theewaterskloof and the water supply system:

• Department of Water and Sanitation. Misinformation about water from Theewaterskloof Dam (January 2018). Releases to irrigators along the Riviersonderend and to the Overberg Water Board, and the 60% curtailment.
• Wikipedia. Western Cape Water Supply System. Theewaterskloof’s capacity and its link to Cape Town.
• Saldanha Bay Municipality. Description and layout of the Western Cape Water Supply System. The users supplied from Theewaterskloof, by release and through the tunnel.
• Department of Water Affairs and Forestry. Western Cape Water Supply System Reconciliation Strategy Study (June 2007). Phasing in the Reserve, and support for water trading.
• Daily Maverick. Water crisis: Western Cape’s declining inland water resources pose challenge (10 November 2024). Officials of the provincial environment department and the national water department on over-allocation.

On the Breede and its estuary:

• Wikipedia. Breede River. Where the Riviersonderend joins the Breede, and the estuary at Witsand.
• Western Cape Department of Environmental Affairs and Development Planning. Draft Revised Breede River Estuarine Management Plan (February 2024). The share of natural flow reaching the estuary, its condition, and the decision on its target category.

On invasive plants and water:

• Le Maitre, D.C., Forsyth, G.G., Dzikiti, S., and Gush, M.B. Estimates of the impacts of invasive alien plants on water flows in South Africa. Water SA 42(4), 2016. Flow losses by catchment.

On paying for water results:

• Johannesburg Stock Exchange. The JSE welcomes Africa’s first nature-linked performance-based bond. The Cape Water Performance-Based Bond.
• WWF South Africa. Partnering for a nature positive solution (August 2023). The Breede catchment water stewardship programme with Woolworths.

On Kwaxala:

• Kwaxala. Home page. Its model, Living Forest Shares, and its pilot with the Kwiakah First Nation.
• Kwaxala. About. Its ownership, the share of revenue kept by communities, and its founding team.
• Corke, P. Conversation with the Forum’s convenors, September 2026. Kwaxala’s wish to work with the valley on water rights.
• Ecosystem Marketplace. State of Private Investment in Nature 2026: Kwaxala. A case study of how Kwaxala turns a forest licence into an asset.
• BioConomy Wiki. Needed vs. Needy. The move from asking for help to offering a service others depend on.
• Valley of Grace BioHub. Water Yield. The valley’s water service as its proposers describe it.