The water crisis in Bronkhorstspruit, where more than 400 people suffered gastrointestinal illness after their exposure to sewage-contaminated water, illustrates the real-life consequences of failures in South Africa’s water services, the South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) has warned.
“The failure to deliver quality water is not just another administrative mishap; it has real-life consequences,” SAHRC commissioner Henk Boshoff said at the recent launch of the Water Rights Tracker.
“The water crisis is impacting lives and livelihoods. We cannot afford to bury our heads in the sand but we must tackle the water crisis head-on.”
The new research project, developed by the SAHRC and the Claude Leon Chair in Earth Justice and Stewardship at the University of the Witwatersrand, found that 107 of South Africa’s 144 water services authorities are in a poor or critical state, Boshoff said.
The five-year project assesses progress towards realising the constitutional right of access to sufficient water across the country’s nine provinces, providing a framework for identifying failures and holding the government accountable.
Despite three decades of constitutional democracy, policy reforms and investment in water infrastructure, millions of people continue to struggle to access sufficient, safe and affordable water. Communities face unreliable supplies, deteriorating infrastructure and unsafe drinking water.
Boshoff said that although access to piped tap water had improved, significant disparities and challenges remained. Citing the 2025 General Household Survey, he said 87.4% of households had piped tap water in their dwellings in 2025, compared with 84.4% in 2004.
National non-revenue water — water lost through leaks, theft and other inefficiencies before it generates revenue — stood at an average of 47.3%, representing about R26 billion in annual losses, he said.
A significant proportion of households collect water from springs, wells, dams, boreholes, rivers and streams.
The Tracker draws on 85 indicators to assess water services through a human rights lens, examining access, affordability, adequacy, quality and efficiency, alongside the financial, technical and institutional resources available to water services authorities.
Professor Tracy-Lynn Field, the chair in Earth Justice and Stewardship and lead researcher, said the project synthesised information from several datasets, including the department of water and sanitation’s Blue Drop reports, which contain valuable information on water services but are not always fully used.
“There’s such valuable information in that report and what our project does is it puts everything in a human rights framing and expands the information that is relevant to the progressive realisation of the right to water,” she said.
The researchers developed a framework based on the international and South African human rights to water, and what progressive realisation of the right entails.
“In our project we essentially describe it as policy and legislation, financial resources, infrastructure resources and human resources,” Field said.
The project also involved engagement with more than 170 officials from water services authorities across the country over the course of a year. The discussions were primarily with technical staff responsible for providing water services.
“This project was not only desktop in nature,” Field said. “Through the HRC’s amazing convening powers, we engaged with, over the course of a year, more than 170 officials from water services authorities across the whole country.”
The engagement helped researchers understand the obstacles faced by those responsible for delivering water services and identify systemic problems, she said.
The Tracker identifies “red flags” that can help communities, civil society organisations and oversight institutions identify potential human rights violations and press for corrective action.
Field said its findings could also assist institutions beyond the SAHRC, including the department, the South African Local Government Association, parliamentary and provincial legislative committees and the Public Protector.
The SAHRC has concluded inquiries into water provision in seven of the country’s nine provinces, with the Western Cape and Eastern Cape still outstanding. Boshoff said the commission planned to release its inquiry report on water provision in Gauteng on 2 November.
He said the National Water Action Plan, released by President Cyril Ramaphosa in July this year, had identified poor water governance, weak accountability and the hollowing out of capacity, particularly at municipal level, among the underlying causes of the crisis.
As South Africa approaches the 2026 local government elections, the researchers hope the Tracker will help put water services and constitutional accountability at the centre of public debate.
Section 27 of the Constitution guarantees everyone the right of access to sufficient water and requires the state to take reasonable legislative and other measures, within its available resources, to progressively realise that right.
“Access to sufficient water is not a privilege or a political promise,” Field said. “It is a constitutional right. The Water Rights Tracker offers a means of measuring whether that right is being realised, identifying where failures are occurring and ensuring that those responsible for delivering water services can be held to account.”
Dr Johandri Wright, a post-doctoral researcher at the Dullar Omar Institute at the University of the Western Cape and a researcher on the Tracker, said water provision was a complex function whose success depended on the effective delivery of other services and varied considerably between municipalities.
Geographical conditions, the size of municipalities, the availability and quality of raw water sources and other natural factors all influenced how water services could be delivered and what they cost, she said.
Wright said the Tracker’s findings challenged assumptions about the relationship between water tariffs and service quality. There was only a modest correlation between higher tariffs and better water quality, particularly in terms of chemical compliance.
High unemployment and economic dependence also did not automatically translate into poor water quality or mean that a municipality could not meet its financial obligations, she said.
She cited the OR Tambo district municipality in the Eastern Cape, where unemployment stood at 55.6% and the dependency ratio at 70% but revenue sufficiency was 175%. In Amathole, unemployment was 46.2% and the dependency ratio exceeded 65%, yet only 0.66% of households received free basic water.
The examples illustrate why municipal water provision needs to be assessed using a range of indicators, rather than socioeconomic conditions alone.