From Melville to Midrand, Johannesburg residents are bearing the social and economic costs of prolonged water outages. Photo: Delwyn Verasamy
Persistent water outages across Johannesburg reflect a “fragile, poorly maintained system” that is failing residents, water advocacy group WaterCAN has warned.
On Tuesday, frustrated residents in Midrand embarked on a peaceful protest as large parts of the city continued to experience prolonged and recurring water disruptions. In Laudium, aggrieved residents protested dry taps.
WaterCAN said some Johannesburg communities have been without reliable water for weeks — and in some cases months — a situation worsened by poor communication from the responsible authorities.
“WaterCAN has found that communities in Melville and Meldene have endured approximately 14 days without water, while residents in Selby have experienced intermittent or no supply for close to five months … Midrand has been plunged into a new outage linked to bulk supply constraints,” the organisation said.
These were not isolated incidents, said WaterCAN executive director Ferrial Adam. “They reflect a fragile, poorly maintained system that cannot cope when failures occur and paint a picture of a city-wide problem.”
Adam acknowledged that the current crisis was triggered by an explosion at a pump station and a major leak at a Rand Water reservoir and that Johannesburg Water was operating within an overstretched and deteriorating reticulation system.
“However, infrastructure failure does not excuse silence, institutional indifference or the abdication of public accountability,” she said.
She added that while Rand Water may be contractually accountable to municipalities and the national minister of water and sanitation, this should not absolve it of communicating directly with the public and civil society during prolonged disruptions.
“Civil society and residents are not peripheral stakeholders. They are the end users who bear the full social, economic and health costs of these decisions. Excluding them from direct communication is unacceptable,” Adam said.
WaterCAN has called on the minister to encourage Rand Water to engage directly with the public during extended outages and on Johannesburg mayor Dada Morero to ensure the city’s utility does the same.
The organisation is also calling for senior management at both Rand Water and Johannesburg Water to institute daily, time-bound public briefings accessible online.
These briefings, it said, should provide clear and consistent updates on outages and recovery timelines, explain technical issues in accessible language, allow limited questions to address misinformation and serve as a single authoritative source of information for residents.
“Transparent communication is not a nice-to-have. It is essential to maintaining public confidence, preventing panic and ensuring accountability,” Adam said. “Residents are not only angry because there is no water; they are angry because no one is explaining honestly and clearly what is going on.”
Briefing the media on Tuesday, Morero attributed Midrand’s water cuts to “a series of incidents within the Rand Water bulk supply system over the past week”, which directly affected Johannesburg Water’s Midrand network.
On 26 January, Rand Water notified Johannesburg Water of emergency repair work at the Palmiet pump station, requiring the isolation and repair of critical infrastructure.
Although initially expected to be completed quickly, technical and operational delays prolonged the work. A power trip at Rand Water’s Zuikerbosch treatment plant on 27 January then affected the Eikenhof and Zwartkoppies systems, reducing the volume of water supplied into the Palmiet system. A further power failure at Palmiet on 31 January compounded the problem.
These incidents resulted in critically low levels at the Klipfontein reservoir, which supplies the Midrand system. A leak was also identified at the reservoir on 1 February, with repairs completed and commissioning finalised the following day.
The outages affected the Erand, President Park, Grand Central, Rabie Ridge and Diepsloot reservoirs. Morero said improvements had since been recorded at several of these sites, with reservoir outlets opened in a controlled manner to support recovery.
“As reservoir levels continue to gradually improve and the system stabilises, supply will progressively extend to higher-lying areas,” he said.
Rand Water said its systems had fully recovered and that pumping was operating at full capacity. The utility currently produces about 5 000 million litres of water a day, 77% of which is consumed by the Gauteng metros of Johannesburg, Tshwane and Ekurhuleni.
Rand Water warned that persistently high water consumption by Johannesburg and Tshwane was placing severe strain on the network, forcing the utility to overstretch its assets.
“Following the power outage incident, Rand Water is aware of the slow recovery of water supply in the Midrand area, Laudium, Attridgeville and surrounding areas in Tshwane, as well as the Tembisa area in Ekurhuleni,” it said. “While some supply interruptions are still being experienced in Tshwane and Ekurhuleni, these are minimal compared to the more significant disruption affecting Midrand.”
Rand Water said it is continually engaging the metros to find solutions. “The Midrand area has a long-standing problem of high-water consumption exacerbated by growth of both formal and informal settlements.
“This problem is well understood by Johannesburg Water and the entity has embarked on upgrading the Midrand systems to augment supply in that area,” it said, noting that high consumption continued to slow recovery efforts.