Sanitation-connection charges versus water-affordability protections: a comparative administrative-law analysis linking fee-waiver silence to discriminatory-exclusion claims by low-income households
Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: Sanitation-connection charges sit at the junction of two statutory regimes that are rarely read together: the water-affordability protections that condition tariff-setting and disconnection on household capacity to pay, and the sanitation-connection charges that local authorities and utilities levy before a household can be connected to a sewer. The silence of most sanitation-charge instruments on fee waivers is not a neutral gap but an administrative-law defect that generates a distinct form of discriminatory exclusion. Drawing on comparative doctrinal analysis of South African, Kenyan, Ugandan and English materials, the article develops a three-part analytical framework: the legal character of the connection charge, the justificatory burden that affordability protections impose on the state when a charge operates as a condition of access, and the doctrinal pathway through which silence becomes actionable as indirect discrimination. The framework is applied to show that where a sanitation charge is set without a waiver mechanism, the affordability protections that govern water supply are structurally bypassed, and low-income households bear a disproportionate access burden that is neither justified nor reviewable. The contribution is a comparative administrative-law account of how omission in sanitation-charge design produces inequality, and a set of criteria for courts and regulators assessing such claims.
Institution: University of Cape Town
Language: English
Topic: Legal Issues in South Africa
Subfield: Law
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7222880833
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