Joburg water crisis — experts urge collective action to restore Johannesburg’s water system

20 Nov 2024

South Africa’s largest city is in a water crisis. Cities reporter and Daily Maverick Associate Editor Ferial Haffejee sat down with the Deputy Minister of Water and Sanitation, David Mahlobo, and Convenor of the Platform for a Water Secure Gauteng, Dr Miriam Altman, to break down the scale of the crisis, and how we can get out of it.

“Our system is completely shattered — 50% of the reservoirs leak, our pipes are from the 1950s and ’60s, we haven’t had proper pipe replacement,” said Daily Maverick Associate Editor Ferial Haffajee during a Daily Maverick webinar on Tuesday evening.

“Are any heads going to roll? Or are we just going to leave the same people who made the problem to fix the problem?”

As a Johannesburg resident herself, reporting extensively on the city, Haffajee posed the question to Deputy Minister of Water and Sanitation David Mahlobo. She challenged the department’s narrative of blaming residents for overconsumption — which is 60% above global norms — when nearly half the city’s water is lost to leaks and illegal connections.

Haffejee was also joined by Dr Miriam Altman, the Convenor of the Platform for a Water Secure Gauteng, to add expert insight to the discussion.

A crisis of distribution

Deputy Minister Mahlobo opened the discussion by emphasising that “the situation in Gauteng is untenable and it has to be defined as a water crisis”.

He clarified, however, that the Vaal River Integrated System, Gauteng’s primary water supplier, remains stable. Right now it is at 33% capacity — and while the tunnel to the Lesotho system (the Lesotho highlands project) is closed, the Free State system and the Sterkfontein Dam in KwaZulu-Natal are on standby in case levels get critical (closer to 18% full).

The challenge right now lies in delivering water to consumers. Of the 5.5 billion litres Rand Water extracts daily, 48% — or 2.5 billion litres — is lost due to leaks and infrastructure inefficiencies, meaning Gauteng far exceeds the national average of water losses.

The department has consistently highlighted that Gauteng residents consume 280 litres per person daily, significantly above the global average of 173 litres, forcing Rand Water to over-extract beyond its licence allowance.

But Haffejee asked if there was not too much victim blaming here, as we’re asking Gauteng users to reduce their consumption while we’re losing so much water before it reaches our taps.

“Are going to leave this to the people who started the problem to fix it?” she asked.

Mahlobo acknowledged that many of the problems stem from leadership issues, including inadequate planning for economic and population growth, and neglecting maintenance — but said this was a historical issue.

“We’ve inherited a broken system,” Mahlobo said, adding: “But we are the current leadership, and we must accept both the assets and liabilities of what we’ve found.”

Committed leadership

He emphasised the importance of committed leadership to address the crisis.

“Therefore, the coordination that is happening in government is an important step, but at the very same time, leadership has to appreciate that we don’t have the monopoly of wisdom and all the answers,” he said, emphasising that mobilisation of society experts like Altman and bringing private sector on board were important.

“But we need to bring the entire civil society,” he added, saying it would take a collective effort to turn this around.

For example, if we are going to reduce the off-take from the system of 1,800 cubic metres per annum to 1,500 cubic metres — which is what we need — he said that “there are a number of actions that must be taken by different people including industries, including ourselves, but we then have to be able to hold each other accountable. But we must be more transparent.

“The plan that is being put in place now I’m very very confident — but it will require resources.”

He said for example, that there was a backlog for replacing pipes that were more than 60 years old in Johannesburg, as Haffejee mentioned, but the City did not have the money to replace all of them.

“When they don’t have that money, we must be able to work with the private sector,” he said.

We need to prepare for climate change’s impact on water supply

Altman said she agreed with everything the deputy minister said.

She emphasised that when it came to reducing our water consumption, people might question why this was necessary when we weren’t in a “Day Zero” situation, but explained that while our dams weren’t empty (right now), the fact remained that the Integrated Vaal River System did not have enough water in it. She noted that this year we had 6% less in the Vaal System than we’ve had over the past three years.

And the Lesotho Highlands Project — which is meant to supply the Vaal system — was about 10 years behind schedule.

While the project was back on track, she noted that recent research by the World Bank showed that due to climate change, even with the Lesotho supply we were still not safe.

“Within the next five years, temperatures might rise by about 2%. Rainfall may still fall by 10%. We don’t know, but they could,” she said. “We have more disasters in southern Africa due to climate change than almost anywhere else in the world.

“So, because we have a very tight supply and demand relationship, we have to be very careful. That’s why the department is clamping down, because we need to get more sustainability in the system.”

She added: “When people say, ‘but there’s water there’, it’s like looking at the budget and saying, ‘but there’s money available. Why can’t we just spend it all today?’

“You just don't want to get there, right? You want to stop well before that happens.”

What’s being done

Altman explained that Johannesburg’s water management challenges stem from a decade-old decision to split key municipal functions such as customer service, revenue collection, and expenditure, leaving no single point of accountability.

Furthermore, revenue generated from water was often misallocated — to which Haffejee responded: “Ja, we know that painfully.”

“Significantly more could have been invested even with the resources that were there,” said Altman, highlighting governance issues exacerbated by State Capture and a general decline in government capacity. While these issues were national in scope, Johannesburg had been particularly hard hit.

But she said the Treasury had been driving a Metro turnaround strategy, active across all eight metros in the country. And then the Department of Water and Sanitation and Johannesburg had their own turnaround strategies — the latter of which had recently been approved by Council.

She said the Platform for a Water Secure Gauteng was working closely with the City, and that she met with executives weekly.

This strategy included consolidating water-related responsibilities under Johannesburg Water, ensuring a single point of accountability for revenue management, credit control, and customer relations.

“There’s only one person to blame — and that would be the MD of Joburg Water now.”

She said this was a big deal, and she was “amazed that a council would put something like this through, if you really want to know... because they’ve just lost a great source of revenue”.

Additionally, funds from water sales were now ring-fenced, with clear guidelines to ensure they were reinvested in water infrastructure. The City aims to triple its infrastructure investment from R1-billion to R3-billion by 2026. Plans also include strengthening management and technical capacity and fostering public-private partnerships to address long-standing inefficiencies.

On a national level, the Department of Water and Sanitation coordinates interventions, such as fixing critical leaks in Gauteng’s water system, supported by initiatives like the Lesotho Highlands Water Project.

Immediate Actions by Johannesburg Water

Johannesburg Water is focusing on five immediate measures to mitigate the crisis:

Pressure management: Reducing pressure during off-peak hours to minimise water loss through leaks.

Leak repairs: Expanding contractor panels and vehicle fleets to fix leaks faster.

Proactive leak detection: Surveying 12,000km of pipes to identify vulnerabilities.

Illegal connections: Disconnecting unauthorised taps that damage infrastructure.

Public-private partnerships: Increasing private investment to reduce non-revenue water.

Living with “Day Zero”

Haffejee shared poll results with the webinar audience, and 73% said they had experienced water throttling.

“You obviously have great plans, but our reality on the ground is very far from that,” pressed Haffejee.

“The reality of people in Johannesburg and Gauteng is they often have Day Zeros, where they don’t have water, and getting through to a system that can help you in a way that’s responsive and service-oriented is absolutely not our experience,” she said.

Mahlobo admitted that we have a big problem and when asked by Haffejee if he’d experienced water cuts, said that he too lived in Gauteng and that his daughter phoned him saying that her right to go to school was being affected by the lack of water.

He highlighted the need for infrastructure upgrades, such as pipe replacements, flow meters, and booster pumps for high-lying areas. He noted that population growth necessitated building reservoirs with at least 48-hour storage capacity to withstand power interruptions.

“The money is now ring-fenced, which is critical,” he said, explaining how the mismanagement of water revenue in the past had contributed to the current crisis. The City’s increased funding through grants like the Urban Settlements Development Grant was a step forward, but he noted that implementing these measures at scale would take time and resources.

He added that in the meantime Johannesburg Water had deployed additional teams to address leaks and maintain critical infrastructure.

Other solutions include:

Upgrading infrastructure: Including replacing old pipes and repairing leaks.

Technical interventions: Implementing technical measures such as flow restrictors and pressure management systems is crucial to minimise leaks and optimise water distribution.

Water restrictions and tariffs: Mahlobo discussed the introduction of water restrictions and tiered tariffs as a way to encourage reduced consumption across all demographics. This approach aims to incentivise responsible water use, particularly in wealthier areas where consumption is higher.

Behavioural change initiatives: Mahlobo stressed the need for consumer education to promote responsible water usage. DM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PaCnA_luAQg

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