Government's failure to properly maintain South Africa's water infrastructure has created a business bonanza for water tanker owners, with municipalities paying hundreds of millions to them despite claims of murky quality controls, sabotage and criminal syndicates.
Tshwane municipality spent R136.9m on water tankers in Hammanskraal and other informal areas in the 2020/21 financial year. Hammanskraal is the centre of a cholera outbreak that has claimed 21 lives and hospitalised dozens more over the past several weeks.
The city says it is now spending more than 10 times annually what it spent on privately-owned water tankers just five years ago.
Robert Mashego, chair of the parliamentary committee on water and sanitation, said most municipalities across South Africa were hiring privately-owned water tankers to deliver water on a regular basis.
"It's now a business transaction for municipalities not to have clean water ... it's our assumption that people don't want water to be cleaned because if you do that, water tankers won't have jobs," Mashego said.
Water and sanitation minister Senzo Mchunu told the Sunday Times on Saturday that the Special Investigating Unit had completed a preliminary report on the issue.
"There's a growing problem of water tanker syndicates operating in many parts of the country," he said.
"There are practical examples where water infrastructure has fallen victim of these trucking syndicates and it's part of the larger corruption that I'm talking about," Mchunu said.
One person has also died from cholera in the Free State, and civic organisations AfriForum and Save Ngwathe say that water samples taken from the Vaal River in Parys have tested positive for cholera.
Several Hammanskraal residents told the Sunday Times this week they had contracted cholera after drinking water from tankers. However truck drivers said they only collect water from stipulated sources and wash their trucks weekly.
The source of the cholera outbreak in Hammanskraal has not yet been determined.
Tshwane spokesperson Selby Bokaba said the city had done tests on half of the water tankers providing water in Hammanskraal.
It had sampled water for testing from its various water distribution points, including hydrants and reservoirs, and the results had shown no trace of cholera. Confirmatory test results from the National Institute for Communicable Diseases, which will pinpoint the actual source of contamination, are outstanding.
It's now a business transaction for municipalities not to have clean water ... People don't want water to be cleaned because if you do that, water tankers won't have jobs
— Robert Mashego, chair of the parliamentary committee on water and sanitation
"We also did tests on 22 of the 44 water tankers supplying formal areas. We are awaiting those results too," Bokaba said.
The outbreak has left authorities scrambling to determine how the contamination occurred. The lack of any clear answer has fuelled speculation within the metro that cholera migh have been deliberately introduced by owners of water tankers after contracts were cut back in March.
Bokaba said the city had on March 7 reduced water delivery trips for privately owned water tankers operating in the informal areas of Hammanskraal from five times a week to three "due to the city's financial constraints".
However, following the outbreak of cholera in Hammanskraal's informal areas, the city last week Friday decided to reintroduce water supply to five days a week until the end of May, he said.
An insider at the metro, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said they suspect that those operating in the informal areas may be behind the contamination of water to force the city to extend their services.
"Don't you think those operating in the informal areas of Hammanskraal envy those in the formal areas of Hammanskraal such as Temba, who have water delivered seven days a week? We suspect, after testing water at all our water supply points and getting negative results for contamination, that it means the cholera must have been introduced into the water somewhere between our water points and being delivered in communities.
"A tenderprenuer who has a truck now parked at home, what can he do? Now the city has reacted. By Monday we had increased the number of [delivery] days from three to five. Clearly these guys will not relax until we increase the number of days to seven and, with the death toll rising, we are likely to increase the number of days in the informal areas to seven."
The Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) declared water in Hammanskraal unfit for human consumption in 2019.
Tshwane spent just R8.1m on water tankers in Hammanskraal in the 2018/19 financial year. However in the 2021/22 financial year, the expenditure had skyrocketed to R85.3m. The city said there were already 96 mobile tankers deployed in region 2 which included Hammanskraal, raking in between R339.45 and R433.55 per hour to deliver water in the area.
Spokesperson Lindela Mashigo said the city had spent R250m in the past five financial years on these privately-owned water tankers in Hammanskraal alone, with the expenditure rapidly rising every year.
Mashigo said the service is outsourced to external service providers and regulated in terms of the general conditions of contract.
"All points in our water distribution network tested negative for E.coli and faecal coliforms, ruling out the possibility of waterborne diseases at these points."
He said the city had appointed other 103 service providers "for provision of rudimentary water services to informal settlements as and when required".
The water for the trucks in Hammanskraal was sourced from fire hydrants supplied by Rand Water and Magalies Water, and also from a borehole in Stinkwater, near Hammanskraal, Mashigo said.
Every Saturday, we clean our tanks to ensure that nothing dirty develops inside. There is no way that our water can have cholera
— Water tanker driver
The Sunday Times followed several water tankers in Hammanskraal this week as they conducted their daily water collection and delivery runs.
Trucks carrying tanks have become a permanent feature of the area, as they fetch and deliver water from Stinkwater or a line in a nearby township, New Eersterust, which is situated between Soshanguve and Hammanskraal.
Drivers who did not want to be named said they believed the water they provide to the community was always clean.
"Every Saturday, we clean our tanks to ensure that nothing dirty develops inside. There is no way that our water can have cholera," a driver said.
Another said: "We physically get inside the tanks and use Domestos [detergent] to clean them. Our water is clean for sure."
An ANC member from Hammanskraal and a member of a ward committee, who spoke to Sunday Times on condition of anonymity, said he bought a water truck with a fellow comrade four months ago.
He said they were promised that when the new administration took over, with Murunwa Makwarela as mayor, they would be given a contract to deliver water in the area.
"Everything was already confirmed, and the deal was sealed that we will also be roped in as suppliers. Our comrades saw that we are struggling, and they said they will make a plan for us," he said.
The man said he was now stuck with the truck, parked at home and not doing anything.
He said he hoped the ANC would take over the city soon, and he'd then be guaranteed a contract.
Dr Ferial Adam, the executive of Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse initiative Water Can, said they had received information that water was being supplied from questionable sources in the Free State.
"A day before the cholera outbreak made the headlines, we received a tip-off from a whistleblower that water tankers in the Free State were taking water from polluted rivers and transporting it to communities in need."
The eThekwini metro was earlier this year ordered by the high court to cancel an allegedly irregularly awarded R90m water tanker contract.
This week, eThekwini municipality told Sunday Times that it was unable to comment on its water supply contracts as they were still subject to a pending court challenge.
Water expert Prof Anthony Turton said: "Tankers are normally part of a water mafia that captures the market by destroying infrastructure. The tanker contracts are often awarded to local businessmen, many linked with the taxi industry.
"Once the market is captured it's controlled by sabotage of infrastructure. In the literature on human health it's a well documented fact that contamination typically occurs in tankers or secondary storage. In KwaZulu-Natal we have these tankers taking water from sources such as rivers, because it takes too long in the queue at the official standpipe."
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