Gauteng municipalities owe Rand Water R7.3bn, excluding three metros

While Gauteng municipalities rack up a debt of R7.3-billion to Rand Water, Johannesburg residents are experiencing widespread water outages, with communities across the city struggling for days without supply.

Loyiso Toyiya, a community leader from Diepsloot, told Daily Maverick that his community was left without water from Wednesday, 6 November, until Sunday night.

“It was one of those difficult situations, where we were not even informed prior that we must expect [water cuts],” he said. “So everyone was caught off guard, to the point that people were even going to the stream to fetch dirty water, to boil it and drink.”

Only on Friday did Johannesburg Water send water tankers to Diepsloot and inform customers that Diepsloot Reservoir was empty, which affected the supply to Diepsloot, Riverside View and Steyn City. On Saturday, the water entity reported that it was working to clear the airlock issue in the pipes, and pump failures were due to issues with power failures within the Palmiet system.

Diepsloot ext 4 Masheroni Street. *PM pic.twitter.com/02r2tPZiJq

— Johannesburg Water (@JHBWater) November 9, 2024

On Sunday at 7am, before water was restored to Toyiya’s community – and others across Johannesburg – the Minister of Water and Sanitation, Pemmy Majodina, convened an urgent meeting to tackle the crisis, bringing together key officials such as Gauteng Premier Panyaza Lesufi and Johannesburg Mayor Dada Morero.

Key drivers of water cuts

Despite Rand Water drawing the maximum allowable supply from the Integrated Vaal River System that the Department of Water and Sanitation allows, demand in Gauteng has consistently outstripped supply.

Water and Sanitation Minister Pemmy Majodina said said surging water demand was influenced by Johannesburg’s rapid population growth and urban sprawl, often amplified by heatwaves and infrastructure vulnerabilities. (Photo: Gallo Images / Luba Lesolle)

As she has done over the past few weeks, Majodina emphasised that Rand Water was supplying more than enough water to Gauteng municipalities. The problem was that the average water consumption in Gauteng stood at an unsustainable 279 litres per person per day, 60% above the global average of 173 litres per person per day.

Read more: Minister blames municipalities for Gauteng water crisis, offering four immediate actions

“As I’ve been saying, what we’re going through in Gauteng is self-inflicted by municipalities,” said Minister Majodina, explaining that municipalities had failed to properly manage their reservoirs, maintain infrastructure, and operate the water system effectively.

She said the surging demand was influenced by Johannesburg’s rapid population growth and urban sprawl, often amplified by heatwaves and infrastructure vulnerabilities.

“We are working hard on a pipe replacement programme because we have acknowledged that the infrastructure is too old in Johannesburg,” City of Johannesburg Mayor Dada Morero said at the briefing.

“Johannesburg is a city established in 1886 and some of our pipes are 50 years and older.”

But demand is not the main issue here – losing nearly half of the water before it reaches the taps is. Nearly half of the water treated for municipal use is “non-revenue water” – water that isn’t paid for, whether it’s physical losses from leaks and burst pipes, illegal connections, or poor revenue collection systems.

The 2023 No Drop Report found that 47%, or 2.1 billion cubic metres a year, of the total volume of water treated for municipal use is expected to be non-revenue water. The international average for non-revenue water is 30%.

Chairperson of the Rand Water board Ramateu Monyokolo said at the briefing that at its maximum, Rand Water provided 5.2 billion litres of water in Gauteng municipalities daily. Of that municipalities lose 48% – 2.5 billion litres a day.

Gauteng municipalities’ debts

“The amount that is owed by municipalities in total to Rand Water as we speak now is R7.3-billion,” said Monyokolo.

After an indication from the Johannesburg mayor and Gauteng premier, he clarified that the three main metros, Johannesburg, Tshwane and Ekurhuleni, didn’t have any debt to Rand Water.

 

Deputy Minister of Water and Sanitation David Mahlobo noted that R22-23-billion was the overall total of money owed by municipalities nationally.

“However, we are saying that whilst there are challenges in municipalities… we are not folding our arms and pointing fingers at municipalities, we’ve continued reaching out to municipalities,” said Monyokolo, explaining that Rand Water wanted to partner with municipalities, which was an approach supported by the provincial government.

“Because we are listed on the stock market, on the debt side, we are saying we will be able to use our balance sheet to raise money in the market to assist municipalities,” said Manyokolo, adding that they would ring-fence Water and Sanitation revenue to ensure security of supply.

Joburg Water’s plan

Johannesburg’s water losses are alarming: DWS’s 2023 No Drop report found the city’s water loss rate at 35%, more than double the global standard of 15%. This loss is largely due to ageing infrastructure, inefficient pressure management and leaks.

Majodina explained that in the urgent meeting, officials agreed that the city of Johannesburg had to reduce the leaks in its water distribution system and complete its current projects to construct more reservoirs and pumping stations to make its water distribution system more resilient to electromechanical breakdowns or spikes in demand.

At Sunday’s meeting, Johannesburg Water outlined the measures that it was implementing, including:

• Nightly water throttling: From 9pm to 4am each night, Johannesburg Water will reduce supply to allow reservoirs to refill. This measure is set to begin on Thursday, 14 November until the system has fully recovered.


• Rapid leak response: Johannesburg Water is procuring a panel of contractors for emergency repairs of large-diameter pipe water leaks. They are also set to increase the number of teams on standby during the week to attend to leaks and burst pipes and increase the number of repair and maintenance teams on duty during the weekend – to improve leak repair response times from 48 hours to 24 hours.


• Increasing the number of trucks available to its leak repair and maintenance teams.

• Implementing cut-offs of illegal connections in key informal settlements. Johannesburg Water will on Tuesday, 12 November 2024, embark on a planned operation to disconnect illegal water connections in the Phumlanqashi area, located in Lenasia.


• Implementing smart pressure management systems: Advanced pressure management systems, including the installation of 45 Smart Pressure Controllers (pressure-reducing valves), will be implemented, which is meant to help with reducing substantial water losses at night when demand is low.

• Accelerating leak detection: To date, over 12,000km of water pipelines have been surveyed and 2,396 burst pipes, 6,727 leaking meters, 442 leaking valves and 259 leaking hydrants were identified and repaired.) This intervention has provided an estimated water demand reduction of 9,457 million litres a year.


• Working with the National Treasury to put in place a Public Private Partnership for the reduction of non-revenue water, to mobilise private sector funding and expertise for reducing non-revenue water.

Ring-fencing revenue

The Johannesburg City Council recently approved a turnaround strategy for Joburg Water which includes ring-fencing revenues from the sale of water for the water function, as well as creating single-point accountability for the water function in the city.

The city explained that it intends to give Joburg Water control over all the functions related to managing the water supply in the city so that it can be held accountable.

Mayor Morero highlighted a Public-Private Partnership, part of the new strategy, to fund and manage infrastructure maintenance. Speaking of the City’s above 40% water loss, Morero said, “Hence we took a decision at our lekgotla this Friday that we’re going to privatise water infrastructure and pump more resources in our adjustment budget in January to help us.”

Considering Gauteng’s high water consumption, Rand Water has also launched a public awareness campaign through the Platform for a Water Secure Gauteng. This initiative aims to promote water conservation by engaging residents and businesses alike in reducing consumption. DM