Day Zero for Ramaphosa, too, as Joburg taps run dry for tens of thousands

31 Jan 2023

Power cuts take out Johannesburg’s water system as 27 mobile tankers race around the city to deliver the life-giving liquid.

President Cyril Ramaphosa’s Hyde Park, Johannesburg, home is in a ward that has been without water for days. Ward 90 was hit with a double whammy when pipe bursts and a “tie-in” after a pipe replacement meant a parched constituency, said ward councillor Martin Williams.

“We’ve had a series of water dramas,” said Williams, who has been kept busy 24/7 with calls from angry residents and with inspections. Williams told Daily Maverick he had seen massive pipe bursts across the ward and that the Parktown reservoir, which feeds the ward, was critically low. At 2.30pm on Monday, 30 January, it was at 0.2% after days of problems. “It’s terrible, there’s no rest,” he said.

Across Johannesburg, a city of six million people, councillors worked day and night to organise water tankers and get information from Johannesburg Water.

While some schools have had to close, Johannesburg Water said the Helen Joseph and Rahima Moosa hospitals had a sufficient supply on Tuesday.

Ward 90 includes Hyde Park, Dunkeld and Illovo, all of which suffer regular water and electricity cuts. The roads in this important business and upmarket residential node the President calls home are pockmarked by potholes, too.

Rolling blackout toll

About one in five of the city’s reservoirs went down when power failures hit pumping stations. Like substations, the constant on-and-off rolling blackouts distress the system and result in losses. So even though dams are full, water can’t be pumped through the system by Rand Water, the city’s supplier.

By Tuesday afternoon, about 15 reservoirs were critically low or empty. This was across the city’s south, southwest, west and northern areas. The city dispatched a fleet of 27 mobile tankers or installed JoJo tanks for communities. In Crosby and Jan Hofmeyr (southwest of Johannesburg, served by the precarious Commando System), residents said they had not had water for five days. Shops said they were running out of bottled water.

On Monday, Rand Water said the heatwave had sapped water reserves from 9 January, and high-stage rolling blackouts, which knocked out the Zuikerbosch purification plant, had a domino effect.

“Rand Water’s system is susceptible to any power outage and may take a minimum of four hours to recover after an outage,” it said.

Then, the utility’s Eikenhof “booster station” experienced two power cuts, further flooring the system. Rand Water says effective recovery depends on fewer power cuts. Still, Eskom has announced Stage 5 and Stage 6 power cuts as the volatile electricity system shows no signs of stabilising even as the Cabinet begins to consider declaring the power crisis a National State of Disaster.

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The system was recovering, said Puleng Mopeli of Johannesburg Water, but community groups said it could take 48 to 72 hours (two to three days) for water to be fully restored.

Water cuts are now a regular occurrence across Johannesburg after the crisis deepened in 2022. Gauteng dam levels are at 100.4%, showing that power cuts rather than water shortages are causing the problem.

Ward 99 councillor Nicole van Dyk said, “I have just got off the phone with a senior official at Johannesburg Water. This situation is now beyond dire for Ward 99 as with many other areas in the rest of the city. Linden reservoir is still at critical levels. Rand Water is still pumping at extremely low levels, it seems, and if their reservoirs are not full, then and I quote: ‘We are stuffed’,”

Van Dyk said Rand Water was not communicating, and the city faced a dry weekend if the bulk supplier did not sort out the problem. Her ward includes Blairgowrie, Ferndale and Linden Extension, among other suburbs that did not have water. DM

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Rolling blackout toll