Daily struggles and uncertain solutions as water chaos escalates

Every night when Farah Domingo opens her taps, the only sound she hears is a loud rattle as air gushes through the pipes. The taps are bone dry in the evenings. 

“The water starts going off anytime after 8pm and, by midnight, the taps are dry,” said Domingo, who lives in Bezuidenhout (Bez) Valley, in the east of Johannesburg. Typically, the household’s water returns by 6am “if we’re lucky” — and then the cycle continues. 

Since September, Johannesburg Water has throttled the Alexander Park reservoir, which  supplies her neighbourhood, to build up capacity in the supply zone. 

For Domingo, who is the spokesperson for the Johannesburg Water Crisis Committee, this is no way to live, especially now as her family observes Ramadan. 

“It’s extremely difficult for us in Ramadan because we get up for breakfast at 4am and the taps are dry,” she said. “You’ve got to fill your kettle before you go to bed; you’ve got to have buckets of water that you can at least do your ablutions, so you can go to pray, because we pray before the sun comes up.”

The prolonged water outages that have become “normalised” in recent months for communities living in Johannesburg’s eastern suburbs frustrates Domingo. 

“People just feel their hands are tied, they don’t know what to do. We must just accept it.”

Then there is the problem of fires. 

“We have lots of refugee families and they’re multi-family dwellings so when there’s load-shedding they’ll have paraffin lamps and candles, and if there’s a fire, we can’t as neighbours even help them because there’s no water.” 

Islam has been in existenceas a religion  for 1 445 years this year, said Domingo. “You don’t have to go back in time and experience Islam at the dawn of its existence; you can live in Johannesburg, South Africa, and you have no water and no power.”

Rand Water

Last month, a series of power outages at Rand Water’s Eikenhof pump station left large parts of Joburg without water for two weeks. But the city’s water woes began to intensify in 2021, said Anja du Plessis, associate professor in the department of geography at the college of agriculture and environmental science at Unisa, with the the first heatwaves in October.

“If we look at 2022, it started already in August. Then, 2023 seemed to be almost the whole year and it continued this year as well,” she said. “There’s no time for people to get a break, for things to stabilise, and we can see that okay, the maintenance is being done, the repairs that are being done … are making a positive change in stabilising the system.” 

This year, too, has been marked by continual water shortages. 

“You have unreliable supply where Johannesburg Water, Rand Water and so on said there’s no water shortage problem and then confessed there is a water shortage problem and are now giving mixed messages as to how long residents can expect to deal with this.”

It’s the same message that is conveyed to consumers about load-shedding. 

“The government said that in five years, 10 years, load-shedding will be sorted out. They might throw out numbers so it seems like they are looking at the problem. 

“But, if we look at what’s happening in the country in terms of our water resources, our water infrastructure and just the overall picture, the water woes aren’t going to stop very soon, especially if you keep on doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.”

Thirsty days ahead

All that residents of Gauteng can do is adapt, because the reality is that they will experience continued water supply issues and might experience water quality issues, too, she said. 

Rand Water spokesperson Makenosi Maroo said the bulk water supplier’s main issues centre on power outages. 

“We are also getting generators for our pumping stations and our booster stations and it’s going to cost us a lot of money. I know that we are investing in coming up with a permanent solution as regards to power, so that we are able to pump if there is a power failure.”

Rand Water’s corporate business plan from July 2023 to June 2028 details the thirsty road ahead. “The water requirements in the Rand Water area of service continue to grow and [are] gradually outgrowing the Integrated Vaal River System output,” it states. 

“Already, Rand Water’s abstraction rights from the Vaal Dam are exceeded … It is estimated that Rand Water has a 10-year period until it reaches its available water resource threshold. In the period between now and then [there] is a need to ensure compliance to the licensed abstraction volume.”

It warned the added pressure relates to the postponement of completing phase two of the Lesotho Highlands Water Project. 

“Water supply challenges will continue to be experienced before October 2027 when it is anticipated to be completed … Excessive consumption by urban users supplied by Rand Water will result in a greater shortfall compared to the yield of the system and cause the restriction levels to be triggered more than often.” 

Phase two is only expected to be completed in 2028. 

According to the business plan, Rand Water’s infrastructure needs to be urgently refurbished and, over the next five years, it will spend more than R28 billion on capital infrastructure.

National water crisis

The water crisis runs far deeper than Gauteng, said Ferrial Adam, nonprofit organisation WaterCAN’s executive manager. Gauteng water cuts make headlines because it is South Africa’s business hub, she added.  

“There are numerous towns where they go without water for days and no one is saying anything about them. There are towns where they cannot drink the water from their taps,” Adam said. 

“In Mpumalanga, you can’t drink the water in Balfour; in parts of the Free State you cannot drink the water … Northern Cape, and it’s a known fact. The people will tell you about it and the municipalities have not issued boil-water notices.”

In December, the 2023 full Blue Drop report revealed that it is not microbiologically safe to drink the water in about half of the country’s water systems. For Adam, this shows how the water crisis is “a national challenge”. 

President Cyril Ramaphosa has appointed a water task team, chaired by deputy president Paul Mashatile, to give dedicated focus to the “resolution of water challenges facing the country”. It will be formed by the departments of water and sanitation, co-operative governance and traditional affairs, human settlements, public works and infrastructure, agriculture, land reform and development as well as the police.

According to Adam, South Africa’s water crisis is set to be far worse than the electricity crisis, and while there are alternatives for energy, there are none for water. 

“I do think we need to deal with this as a crisis, not with knee-jerk reactions and piecemeal and pie-in-the-sky solutions.”

No province has been spared

While the Water and Sanitation Minister Senzo Mchunu has stressed that South Africa is not in the throes of a water crisis, Du Plessis disagrees. 

“If you ask people in the informal settlements, in Limpopo, if you speak to the people in Hammanskraal and Jacobsdal, and metros and smaller towns like Beaufort West, no provinces have been spared this due to the complete lack of planning, management and informed decision-making, non-maintenance and the continued misappropriation of funds and, basically, the complete neglect that we are now seeing the results of.” 

South Africa’s rivers and dams are so polluted they have lost their buffering capacity, which has major implications for water quality. This, coupled with population growth, socio-economic development and rural-urban migration, is placing further strain on the country’s water resources and water infrastructure.

“We have reached a tipping point now where we cannot sit and wait for the development of task teams, like the president has done, where it is led by the deputy president and, obviously, a couple of ministers here and there. 

“My question is, has any thought gone into that, in terms of appointments, or is it just like with the electricity crisis — you just put a task team together to try to show you’re doing something and it’s window dressing at the end of the day,” Adam said.

Since 2022, the residents of Jan Hofmeyer, near Brixton in Johannesburg, have battled long periods without water. And there is no end in sight. 

“We had nine months without water in 2022 and seven months without water in 2023,” said community leader Yola Minnaar. 

While there was water in their taps in December, it stopped flowing in January. 

“Now, it comes and goes. We just have to accept it and get used to the bucket system. Many residents have told me they are not voting in the elections this year because of this water situation.”