WATCH | Joburg residents face stiff hike in water levy from July

Johannesburg residents will soon be hit hard in the pocket as the city scrambles to raise billions of rand to pay for water infrastructure as well as money to catch up on maintenance backlog to ensure consistent water supply.

As of July, residents will soon pay a fixed water levy of about R124 a month, up from R65.08 a month, regardless of how much water a household uses. The money is expected to go towards water infrastructure.

This increase is the latest in the increases that residents will have to deal with as of next month. The city council recently agreed on an 8.6% increase in electricity while water and sanitation is expected to rise by 11%.

Refuse is to go up by 6.2%, and property rates by 3.6%.

Johannesburg Water revealed on Wednesday that the city has over the years not invested at the right level or scale when it comes to infrastructure.

As a result, it needs mechanisms to raise the necessary resources to fund this investment, said Joburg Water’s managing director Ntshavheni Mukwevho.

“While a portion of the funding comes from grants, a significant amount must be raised by the city itself,” Mukwevho said.

He said the city had significantly increased investment in water infrastructure after years of underinvestment.

“It is for this reason that these demand-management levies will help us fund the maintenance that needs to take place.”

According to Mukwevho, investment in Joburg Water has steadily increased over the years. While capital spending on water infrastructure hovered between R1bn and R1.2bn around the 2020/21 financial year, the city increased funding to R1.7bn in 2025/26 to address critical refurbishment projects.

Mukwevho said this would rise to just more than R1.9bn from July. “If we take into account the type of work that needs to be done over the next 10 years, which we have publicly outlined as an organisation, we need to invest R27bn.

“The bulk of that funding will need to come from resources that we raise ourselves so that we can maintain a strong focus on infrastructure maintenance,” he added.

Mukwevho said the funds collected from the water levy would help fund the replacement of ageing infrastructure, the construction of new reservoirs and improvements aimed at securing water supply across the city.

“We need to ensure that ageing infrastructure and components are replaced when necessary, and that new reservoirs are built where required. This will allow us to achieve the ideal storage capacity across the city and provide up to 36 hours of water storage for every community.”

The proposed increase comes as Joburg Water’s tariff adjustments are also being driven by an 11% increase in bulk-water purchase costs from Rand Water.

Johannesburg Water’s conservation manager Logan Munsamy said the utility was also tackling high levels of water losses.

He said Johannesburg Water closed the 2024/25 financial year with non-revenue water at 44.8%. This was the amount of water supplied for which the utility did not receive revenue, he said.

Physical losses from leaks and bursts accounted for 23.8%. “We’ve identified priority reservoirs which have currently been taken out of service and are undergoing repairs. We are doing quite a bit in terms of our ageing infrastructure pipe replacement.

“When we speak of ageing infrastructure, we have a lot of old asbestos cement pipes and steel pipes. That’s currently under way, and we are accelerating,” he said.