Knysna activates Joint Operations Centre after widespread water cuts

Six water tankers and tonnes of bottled water are being dispatched to the Knysna Municipality after residents were left without a supply of water. Frustrated residents have protested about the situation in the town, known as the “jewel of the Garden Route”.

The Garden Route District Municipality (GRDM) said the water crisis occurred after the town’s main domestic water pump broke.

On Thursday, Mario Ferreira, the Southern Cape manager of the Gift of the Givers and a Knysna resident, told Daily Maverick, “The crisis has been continuing, you can say, for years now in Knysna.”

The Western Cape municipality has made headlines for its coalition instability and service delivery problems.

Ferreira said after the water pump stopped working, “They still don’t have a deadline on when it will be up and running again.”

He warned that reservoirs might become empty as emergency backup pumps were also out of order.

Earlier this week, the Knysna-Plett Herald reported that residents of Rheenendal had protested about an eight-day water shortage.

Ferreira said, “We have been out with our tankers to areas like Rheenendal … to provide water in that area, but the emotions of the people are not good.”

He said the N2 in Knysna had been barricaded “to try and get attention from the municipality to actually do something”.

Areas affected by the outage included Concordia, the Heads and parts of town.

“There are creches, schools already without water, which is creating big problems. It’s from the shacks to the upmarket properties that are basically without water at the moment.”

JOC activated

The Knysna Municipality said on Wednesday that a Joint Operations Centre (JOC) had been activated to coordinate and manage the ongoing water supply challenges and would remain operational until the situation “normalises”.

The JOC included the Western Cape government, Garden Route District Municipality Disaster Management, Knysna SAPS, Knysna Infrastructure Group, Greater Knysna Business Chamber, law enforcement, Traffic Services, and Fire & Rescue Services.

Mayor Thando Matika said, “We are grateful for the substantial support received from the Western Cape government and the Garden Route District Municipality.”

Two water tankers from the Knysna Municipality are servicing the Rheenendal area, and once the system is stabilised, the vehicles will be redirected to support the broader Knysna area.

The GRDM also provided two water tankers, with Mayor Andrew Stroebel saying, “Only one 6,000-litre water tanker was dispatched initially to assist Knysna, but it soon became evident that additional tankers would be required. The tankering service was beefed up to two units, which now includes an additional 10,000-litre unit. The GRDM has been assisting since last weekend and continues to provide its support the Knysna and its communities.”

With the two tankers from Gift of the Givers, a total of six tankers are providing relief to residents.

Gift of the Givers has deployed water tankers to the Knsyna municipality. (Photo: Gift of the Givers)

Old problems resurface

Knysna’s water problems aren’t new. Daily Maverick reported in December 2021 about a two-week water outage in the town following problems at water reservoirs.

Knysna is under a Section 154 support plan by the provincial government, which highlights council instability (it’s run by a coalition of the African National Congress, Patriotic Alliance and the Plaaslike Besorgde Inwoners), a breakdown in trust between the council and community, and severe problems including vacancies in the the municipality’s infrastructure services directorate.

Read more: Five key takeaways from the Knysna service delivery diagnostic report

More recently, Mayor Matika told Daily Maverick the municipality had short-term and long-term goals to fix the infrastructure problems.

These include building another dam and another water treatment facility, and in the short term, reprioritising funds to infrastructure projects. Matika attributed some of the problems to an increase in population, which put more pressure on the municipality’s ageing infrastructure.

According to the latest census, there were 96,055 people living in Knysna in 2022, compared with 68,659 in 2011.

Former mayor Mark Wilemse told Daily Maverick in April 2024 that some of the issues around infrastructure were because the municipality never future-planned, even after the devastating 2017 fires.

Read more: ‘When two elephants fight, it’s the grass that suffers — and Knysna is the grass’

In Knysna’s 2024/25 budget, R52.8-million was allocated to repairs and maintenance, of which R46.4-million was for infrastructure services.

On Thursday, the DA constituency head for Knysna, MP Ryan Smith, condemned the water outage and blamed the “ANC/EFF/PA/PBI coalition of corruption”.

The party demanded that Matika fast-track the restoration of water.

“Knysna needs a government that will adequately plan to overhaul and expand Knysna’s water provision and wastewater treatment infrastructure as a key priority in the Integrated Development Plan (IDP) for the entire municipality,” read the party’s statement.

The DA wanted Matika to provide a clear timetable for the restoration of the water supply and to conduct an “urgent infrastructure audit” of the municipality, placing emphasis on water services and factoring in population growth and development over the next decades.

“The cost of renewing Knysna’s water infrastructure is only immense now, in the short term, because this coalition has left maintenance and expansion until too late. It is now imperative that the municipality acts swiftly to provide this basic human right to residents,” said Smith. DM