MALAIKA MAHLATSI | Rand Water extracts and provides enough water to municipalities, so why is Gauteng in crisis?

Protests have erupted across Gauteng over the ongoing water outages that are bringing households and businesses to the brink.

Thursday marks the 24th day without water in Melville. Various parts of Midrand have been without water for more than a week. Parts of Soweto, the largest township in the country, have been experiencing severe, multi-day water outages. Residents of Central Johannesburg have been without water for days. Taps in the Deep South, including areas like Orange Farm, are running dry. Traffic has been disrupted in parts of Ekurhuleni due to protests across communities such as Nigel, over total, multi-day and sometimes weeks-long water supply failures. The situation is dire and communities are rightfully frustrated.

Bulk water utility Rand Water has communicated that the water crisis is due to high levels of consumption ― an argument that has been misconstrued to mean that residents of Gauteng are to blame for the crisis. But when Rand Water refers to high consumption, it is referring to the volume of water that is supplied to municipalities, not necessarily the amount of water being consumed by residents.

This point needs elaboration. Rand Water is authorised by the department of water and sanitation (DWS) to extract about 1,802-million cubic metres of raw water yearly from the Integrated Vaal River System (IVRS), which translates to roughly 5,000 megalitres (ml) a day. This amount is dictated not by Rand Water but the law of the land, specifically the National Water Act. This extraction rate is not insufficient. In fact, it is enough to meet the water consumption needs of municipalities.

Why then is Gauteng in a state of water crisis?

At the core of the problem is the complete dysfunction of water governance at municipal level. Gauteng’s municipal water crisis is driven by failing and aged water infrastructure, which leads to high levels of non-revenue water.

When you understand that nearly half of the water in these municipalities is lost before it gets to households and businesses, the scale of the crisis becomes clear.

Roughly half of the water in most municipalities, including Johannesburg, is lost to leaks, vandalism and theft. About 32.9% of the total water supply in Johannesburg is lost through physical leaks in ageing infrastructure.

To provide context, the City of Johannesburg has a licensed allocation of 1,356ml of water a day but has an average consumption of 1,720ml. The City of Tshwane has a licensed allocation of 667ml but consumes an average of 861ml. The City of Ekurhuleni, with a licensed allocation of 1,022ml per day, has an average daily consumption of 1,019ml.

When you understand that nearly half of the water in these municipalities is lost before it gets to households and businesses, the scale of the crisis becomes clear.

While Joburg Water has implemented a five-year strategy to repair reservoirs, replace pipes and improve pressure management, this is being undermined by the governance failures and financial mismanagement in the entity. The financial mismanagement of the entity has devastating implications that go beyond its soaring debt, which stood at over R1bn at the end of 2025. It has direct implications for water infrastructure development and expansion.

Municipalities now owe water boards about R28bn, with Rand Water alone owed just over R6bn. This level of non-payment significantly constrains the bulk water utilities’ capacity to expand and upgrade critical water infrastructure at the scale required. When municipalities fail to settle their accounts, bulk water utilities’ ability to finance and implement essential infrastructure projects is compromised. This then hampers efforts to meet the growing demand for water services, particularly in Gauteng, where the population is increasing at an annual rate of 2.6%, compared with the national average of 1.6%.

Though Rand Water has undertaken major infrastructure projects over the past three years, such as the Vlakfontein Reservoir and Station 5A, these investments will not achieve their intended impact unless the entire water value is strengthened and aligned to ensure financial sustainability and operational efficiency.

Thus the argument about high water consumption in Gauteng is fundamentally an issue of governance failures at municipal level, even as direct human consumption is also high. The crisis state of water governance in the province is reflective of the broader dysfunction of municipalities. Residents who are protesting have to link this water crisis to the broader governance crisis because these are not separate issues ― one gives rise to the other.

Malaika is a researcher and geographer who holds a Masters in Water Resource Science from the Institute for Water Researcher at Rhodes University