Ageing pipes, vandalism and busted pumps mean when Spring Day rolls around, and 58 public pools across Johannesburg are supposed to open, only 33 — maybe fewer — will be ready for swimmers.
It’s a chilly truth in a city that, year after year, has budgeted millions for new and refurbished pools. On paper, the money is there; in reality, the capital spending has been small, slow or simply doesn't happen at all.
When the Sunday Times asked for a list of pools in trouble, the city gave none. The financials tell the story anyway: big budgets, little spend, and no real explanation.
A new pool in Cosmo City — promised as far back as 2005 in a Brand South Africa article on the new township’s amenities — still exists only on paper, 20 years later.
In the 2023/24 Medium-Term Revenue and Expenditure Framework, the project appeared with a healthy R30m allocation. In the 2024/25 budget that had withered to R1m, the rest reduced in capital “adjustments” in the past two years.
Delivery records from the Johannesburg Development Agency — the city’s implementing arm that reports on delivery — show near-zero spend on this and other multimillion-rand projects.
Asked for a Cosmo City pool status update, the city responded: “Due to the insufficient budget allocated to this project, it has been put on hold for now, attempts will be made for funding in the Medium-Term Financial Framework. Motivations will be done to augment the budget and finalise the project.”
And the reason so many existing pools are shut? The official line is “ageing infrastructure, vandalism and mechanical problems”. This is the reason the maintenance budget is stretched to breaking point.
“We do our best but the challenges never go away. There’s massive vandalism — you fix something, turn around, and it’s broken again,” said Aloma Henning, who heads the sports and recreation department's aquatics division.
Load-shedding and water cuts have destroyed equipment and infrastructure her team cannot afford to replace.
Henning’s pride, however, is her staff: “At Moffat View, one of the poorer areas, staff found old paint, bought brushes with their own money and made the place look good.”
She proudly showed photos of freshly painted changerooms. But the floor remained cracked and damaged. The two 20-litre tins of paint needed to paint it weren’t in the budget. “It’s so hard,” she said.
The department of community development, which oversees sports and recreation, says all of the 33 pools due to reopen next month may not open as “filters and circulation systems can fail at any time”.
Only two heated pools — Linden and Coronationville — are working; the rest run cold, and no new heated pools are planned.
In Eldorado Park, the stripped-bare Olympic-size Goud Street pool will remain a ruin. Years of vandalism saw it demolished, and the city says there’s no plan to rebuild it — two other pools in the area “serve the community”.
For a city that's big on community sport and recreation, it’s a sorry sight. On sweltering days many pools will remain empty and closed.
Joburg's hopes that things will change — the last season ended with 38 pools closing and this new one will start with only 33 opening — have already sunk.
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