Umzumbe-based Pumula Beach Hotel
KwaZulu-Natal South Coast businesses are reeling from the effect of the ongoing water crisis and spending heavily on drilling boreholes and paying for water tank deliveries as municipalities struggle to provide a reliable supply.
According to the Federated Hospitality Association of South Africa (Fedhasa), the voice of the country’s hospitality sector, the situation has been escalating for the past 10 years and is now severely hurting tourism, with devastating business losses.
Residents’ reports gathered by Fedhasa show that the South Coast has experienced shortages over the past 18 months, having water for only 107 out of 255 days in the period 10 December 2021 to 22 August 2022.
The effect on the local hospitality industry has been disastrous, with establishments struggling to survive and tourists shying away from visiting the area, Fedhasa national chairperson Rosemary Anderson said.
Tourists are hesitant to visit due to the uncertainty surrounding water supply and businesses are haemorrhaging revenue, leading to layoffs, while local shops are also struggling to survive. Private water tanker operators are also capitalising on the crisis and are charging exorbitant prices, further crippling businesses.
Anderson called for the department of water and sanitation to step in and take control of Ugu municipality’s water and sanitation services, which supplies towns including Umzumbe, Pumula, Southport, Umtentweni, Port Shepstone, Shelly Beach, Uvongo, Margate and Southbroom.
“The tourism industry, a vital economic driver for the region, is in peril, and the future looks
bleak without swift intervention. Fedhasa is standing firm, urging the government to
prioritise the restoration of a stable and reliable water supply for the South Coast,
safeguarding the livelihoods of residents and ensuring the region’s allure as a thriving
tourism destination,” Anderson said, adding that members had spent millions on tanked water to keep their businesses afloat.
Umzumbe-based Pumula Beach Hotel general manager Paul Laing said the resort had spent R2 million in the 2022 financial year just to secure water tankers to keep its doors open and ensure it was business as usual during the crisis. The most recent holidays, July 2023 and December 2022, were no exception as water outages persisted.
“Often the municipality is not aware of the outage. When they do find a problem, it often takes weeks to repair,” Laing said. “For us at Pumula Beach Hotel, the problem is simple — no water and the hotel cannot function. We have six times 40 000 litre tanks which we have as emergency backup but these only last for four days when we are in peak season.
“We are constantly juggling pumps to regulate what we have and ensure that we can bring tankers in to top us up. Back in December, we had five weeks without municipal water, April 2022 a similar amount of time.
“Numerous disruptions, sometimes for weeks at a time, followed now by another two week outage in July. We see long weekends and school holidays often without water. We employ over 60 staff and, unless water issues can be resolved, these jobs are in jeopardy,” he warned.
Several other bed-and-breakfast establishments and holiday cottages face a similar plight, and for those without the means to solve the problem privately, cancelled bookings become the norm. Some property owners are desperate to offload their assets, according to Fedasa.
The lack of water supply to holiday towns over the past decade has caused massive reputational damage to the KZN South Coast brand, said Vicky Wentzyl, founder of The Southern Explorer, a route marketing organisation that represents 143 members with more than 10 000 holiday beds — basically every major tourism business on the coast.
“Visitor numbers are down — it’s been a long hard road with Covid-19, floods, E coli scares, looting and now load-shedding — and our tourism economy has been badly hit,” Wentzyl said.
“As an organisation, we need to spend more time highlighting the fact that the private sector has spent billions in creating solutions to the ‘water woes’ that plague us on a continual basis. All of our members offer plumbed-in, rain water or borehole solutions to allow for our visitors to enjoy holidays with uninterrupted water supply.
“If the tourism stakeholder is going to survive these uncertain times it is of huge importance that we, as private sector, get the message out that solutions have been put in place.”
In 2022, the South African Human Rights Commission public hearings revealed that the water crisis on the South Coast was a result of ageing infrastructure, corruption and a lack of maintenance. But, more than a year later, it seems nothing has improved.
Meanwhile, Ugu district municipality has downplayed the extent of the water crisis, saying it is aware only of “intermittent supply challenges” and is implementing a plan to fix its water supply services to the region.
Spokesperson France Zama said the municipality denounced what he called the narrative by Fedhasa “that the entire South Coast has had no access to water supply in the past 18 months”.
“Whilst the above statement is untrue, the municipality is aware of intermittent supply challenges in the northern system (including Anerley, Pumula and Hibberdene) due to major burst pipes to reservoirs supplying the areas as a result ageing infrastructure,” Zama said.
“Static tanks are being replenished daily as an interim measure while the municipality is working around the clock to fast-track the restoration process to ensure supply is fully restored.”
Zama said the municipality, with the support of Water and Sanitation Minister Senzo Mchunu, was in the process of implementing turnaround plans and projects to improve water supply in the district.
These include an emergency borehole programme, through which 20 boreholes are already pumping clean drinking water to communities, the replacement of a pipeline in the south central area and the refurbishment of sanitation infrastructure in Harding.
There are also plans to upgrade the KwaMadlala water pipeline and Dunjazana water pipeline and to refurbish electrical and mechanical infrastructure as well as bulk meter and valve chambers.
“A tight monitoring schedule is also being implemented with regular site visits conducted to ensure supply is improved,” Zama said.
Water and sanitation spokesperson Wisane Mavasa said although the department could not take over the services as Fedhasa had proposed, it had intervened in the crisis.
“The (department) is very concerned about the impact of water supply interruptions on tourism, business, and communities (and) therefore has allocated R70m in 2022/3 and an additional R150m from the water services infrastructure grant to the Ugu district municipality to implement interventions including the replacement of old pipes and valves,” Mavasa said.
“The high levels of water outages are due to ageing infrastructure and lack of maintenance. The severe disruption in services in the Hibberdene, Phumula and Mzumbe areas has been a result of several breakdowns on the main supply pipelines to these areas.”
She said Mchunu had established a war room in Ugu district, chaired by acting
municipal manager Vela Mazibuko, to monitor the implementation of the water turnaround plans and projects.
But Mavasa explained that there is no legal mechanism for the water and sanitation department to take over the municipality’s water services.
“The provision of water services is a municipal function in terms of the Constitution. The section 63 of the Water Services Act only enables the department to intervene on condition that the municipality is placed under administration in line with Section 139 of the Constitution by the provincial department of co-operative governance and traditional affairs,” she said.
“The section grants the provincial executive broad power to intervene when a municipality
cannot or does not fulfil an executive obligation in terms of the Constitution or legislation.
Section 63 only allows for an intervention, not a long-term or permanent ‘take over’.
“Before initiating a section 63 intervention, the department is first implementing a support initiative to assist the Ugu district municipality in the provision of services. The department is in the process of drafting amendments to the Water Services Act to strengthen its regulatory role and to make section 63 more effective,” Mavasa added.
She said the support projects had already resulted in improvements in the water supply in some areas.
“Investigations will be undertaken to get to the root cause of the recent interruptions in the Hibberdene, Phumula and Mzumbe areas to ensure that all is done to provide a reliable water supply for the next holiday season,” Mavasa said.
Asked to comment on the effect the water crisis is having on tourism businesses, Tourism Minister Patricia de Lille’s spokesperson, Zara Nicholson, said that ensuring water supply was not the mandate of the department.
“We note the intervention by all government departments and spheres of government such as emergency boreholes and the communication by Minister of Water and Sanitation Senzo Mchunu that the department of water and sanitation has pumped R150 million into the Ugu district municipality to help the district to resolve its water crisis,” Nicholson said.