Towards Adaptive Integrated Water Resources Management in Southern Africa: The Role of Self‐organisation and Multi‐scale Feedbacks for Learning and Responsiveness in the Letaba and Crocodile Catchments

South Africa is acclaimed for its water reform and the adoption of integrated water resources management (IWRM) as the framework for managing catchment water resources to achieve equity and sustainability. The proposed process is inherently adaptive, allowing for reflection and learning in complex, uncertain environments such as catchments. A decade on, attention has now turned to implementation. In this paper we present some key findings drawn from a three‐year study in six major catchments in the water‐stressed north‐east of South Africa which examined factors constraining or enabling implementation. Factors critical for the evolution of tenable and appropriate IWRM include a practice‐based understanding of policy, the role of leadership and communication, governance, collective action and regulation, and self‐organisation and feedbacks. This paper concerns self‐organisation, leadership and feedbacks. Their origins, drivers, development and role in building resilience are examined in two of the six catchments: the Letaba and Crocodile catchments. Self‐organisation, leadership and feedback loops exist in both but are highly variable in terms of their contribution to IWRM. The underlying factors contributing to their functionality are identified. Despite good efforts to self‐organise and functional feedbacks there is evidence of either vulnerability or of limited impact when processes are confined to a local scale, which constrains learning and transformation at a wider scale. In other instances, encouraging evidence is emerging in which leadership, governance and the ability to self‐organise are central to effectiveness. We conclude that self‐organisation and responsive multi‐scale feedback loops are essential for management in catchments understood as complex systems as they provide the basis for learning and response to an evolving context.