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Current experiments to transfer water management from the state to end-users face difficulties, which technical and agro-economic analyses are not able to fully explain. Through a case study in the Kairouan region (Tunisia), this article proposes to explore history as it is told locally to reinterpret contemporary failures of water management. Describing a series of dispossessions, these accounts of local history explain part of the current demands of farmers for an increased water supply. The illegal usage that disrupts collective water sharing seeks to offset water rights lost during the past and can be seen as an adaptation to a succession of changes imposed from the outside. Given deep ongoing political changes, the Tunisian context seems to favour the construction of a dialogue between water administrations and rural populations. In this context, oral history could play an important role.