A Fragile Hegemon, a Fragile Hegemonic Discourse: A Critical Engagement with the Hydropolitical Complex and Implications of South Africa's Hydropolitical Environment for Southern Africa

As a result of the water security dilemma in southern Africa and the relative scarcity of the resource in the region, several scholars have referred to southern Africa as a hydropolitical complex. Using a constructivist ontology, this paper attempts to illustrate the hydropolitical complex's strengths and weaknesses in both helping and hindering an understanding of transboundary water resources by emphasising that while state-centric and/or system level analyses may lend themselves to basin-wide cooperative strategies due to the manner in which water is prioritised as a strategic resource within a river basin and beyond a basin, it displays a limited utility in explaining subnational configurations. Using South Africa as a case study, and thereby opening up the black box of the region's most powerful state, the hydropolitical complex unveils its numerous weaknesses.