As globalization and market liberalization march forward unabated the global commons continue to be commodified and privatized at a rapid pace. In this global process, the ownership, sale and supply of water is increasingly a flashpoint for debates and conflict over privatization, and nowhere is the debate more advanced or acute than in Southern Africa.

Introduction: From Public to Private (to Public Again?) * Part I: Theory and Practice - Theorizing Water Privatization in Southern Africa * The New Water Architecture of SADC * The Constitutional Implications of Commercializing Water in South Africa * Turning Off the Taps on the GATS * Part II: Case Studies in South Africa - Entrenching Inequalities: The Impact of Corporatization on Water Injustices in Pretoria * Managing the Poor by Remote Control: Johannesburg's Experiments with Prepaid Water Meters * Public Money, Private Failure: Testing the Limits of Market Based Solutions for Water Delivery in Nelspruit * The Political Economy of Public Private Contracts: Urban Water in Two Eastern Cape Towns * The Murky Waters of Second Wave Neoliberalism: Corporatizing as a Service Delivery Model in Cape Town * 'Free Water' as Commodity: The Paradoxes of Durban's Water Service Transformations * The Rise and Fall of Water Privatization in Rural South Africa: A Critical Evaluation of the ANC's First Term of Officer, 1994-1999 * Part III: Case Studies in the Region - Stillborn in Harare: Attempts to Privatize Water in a City in Crises * 'There is Still No Alternative': The Beginnings of Water Privatization in Luska * Water Privatization in Namibia: Creating a New Apartheid? * The New Face of Conditionalities: The World Bank and Water Privatization in Ghana * Index