The context and rationale for the reform programme is encapsulated in the numerous research findings which point to the inherent weaknesses in community management of water systems and its threat to sustainability. Baumann, 2006; Van den Broek and Brown, (2015) posited that in spite of the achievements in water services delivery, there is growing consensus that the approach needs to be overhauled. Moriarty et al., (2013) explicitly agreed with a generally held belief that community management is ‘at the beginning of the end’…not principally because community management has failed, but because it is reaching the limits of what can be realistically achieved in an approach based on informality and voluntarism’.