Down the drain: Failures in municipal infrastructure are leaving residents without reliable water supply.
Almost 50% of the country’s precious resource is lost before it reaches consumers. Photo: Delwyn Verasamy

Civil engineers have welcomed President Cyril Ramaphosa’s acknowledgment of the water crisis affecting many parts of South Africa but warn that the real challenge lies in implementation at municipal level.

“We, as the South African Institution of Civil Engineering (Saice), are very encouraged  that the water crisis has received attention at the highest level in the president’s State of the Nation address,” said Zweli Mahlangu, the chairperson of Saice’s water division and a civil engineer with more than 20 years’ experience in the private sector.

“But the challenge is implementation, where water gets lost between supply and the end user. “With that now receiving attention in Sona, we expect meaningful change in ensuring water reaches people where it is needed.”

In his State of the Nation address (Sona) earlier this month, Ramaphosa promised urgent action to tackle the water crisis, pledging to personally chair a national water crisis committee to coordinate interventions and hold failing municipalities accountable. He warned that municipal managers could face criminal charges for failing to provide basic water services.

Engineers point to severe, localised failures in municipal infrastructure, particularly in metros such as Johannesburg, that are leaving residents without reliable water supply and exposing the long-term consequences of neglected maintenance.

“As Saice, we represent the engineering profession but our members work across government, municipalities, consulting firms and water boards,” said Abri Vermeulen, a civil engineer with 35 years’ experience in the water sector and treasurer of Saice’s committee.

“We see these problems in our daily work and in our engagement with institutions. It has been a concern for a while but pinpointing exactly where the issues are can be difficult.”

While some water outages were caused by sudden breakages, the deeper problem was that water infrastructure had a finite lifespan and much of it had not been replaced in time, Vermeulen said.

“A water system is designed for a certain lifetime. Typically, a pipeline is designed for 20 years,” he said. “Every 20 years, you must replace it, otherwise it will fail — sometimes quite spectacularly.”

Municipal networks were built in phases over decades, so replacement needs to be continuous. 

“Utilities, whether a water board or a municipality, should replace a certain percentage of their network every year, around 2% to 5%. As long as that happens, everything works well and no one notices.”

Problems arose when the cycle was broken. 

“When you haven’t done that for a while, things start breaking, first slowly and then suddenly very quickly,” Vermeulen said. 

While the engineering solution is straightforward, the consequences of delay were not. 

“The solution, from an engineering perspective, is very simple: you need to replace the pipes. But that’s neither quick nor cheap. You have to physically dig them out and replace them.”

Vermeulen noted that Johannes-burg had set a target of replacing critical pipelines by 2035 — a necessary but lengthy process.

South Africa was the 30th-driest country in the world, yet average consumption per person was way above the global average, he said.

“People often don’t realise how scarce it [water] is and they don’t make much effort to conserve water. That obviously varies greatly across the country.”

Cape Town remained an exception, Vermeulen said, pointing out that since the Day Zero drought, per capita consumption had dropped and had remained below the world average.

Importantly, the engineers caution against framing the issue as a single national crisis.

“We don’t have a national water crisis in the same way that we had a national electricity crisis,” he said. 

“Electricity is generated and fed into a national grid. Water is a physical resource that flows under gravity, so we don’t have a national system.” 

As a result, failures were inherently local. 

“Every area has its own system, so while there’s a crisis in one system, there’s not necessarily a crisis in another system.” 

Municipalities often lacked the budget to properly maintain and replace assets, partly because they did not recover sufficient costs. 

“Sometimes there’s reluctance to increase tariffs or enforce payment but paying for something encourages responsible use,” Vermeulen said. “It’s important to make people aware that water is scarce and that everyone has a responsibility to use it properly.”

In Gauteng, for example, bulk supply was not the main concern. The Integrated Vaal River System, with its 14 interlinked dams, was adequate and Rand Water did its job well, he said.

“The real challenges lie at the municipal level and these vary enormously.”

One of the clearest indicators of infrastructure failure was the country’s high level of non-revenue water: water that was treated but lost before reaching paying customers. Nationally, losses are estimated at about 47%.

“That’s far too high,” Vermeulen said. “Internationally, anything below 20% is considered good. Even metro losses of around 35% are excessive. 

“This water has been imported from as far as Lesotho, treated and pumped. When it’s lost through leaks, it’s a major financial loss.”

Mahlangu said municipalities often reacted to failures rather than prevented them. “You don’t wait for a problem to occur. You put measures in place to minimise or mitigate it beforehand.”

While funding was frequently cited as the main obstacle, Mahlangu said, municipal priorities played an equally important role. 

“You may find a municipality that is well funded but money is prioritised elsewhere. Instead of maintaining pipelines or pump stations, funds get diverted to roads or potholes. It depends on the priority at the time.”

“We need engineering professionals in key decision-making positions,” Vermeulen said. “I’ve seen it many times where the procurement committee doesn’t have any or very few engineering professionals and it makes the wrong decision. It’s important to have those people and to listen to them.” 

Mahlangu agreed, adding that the president’s water crisis committee should include highly skilled and experienced engineering personnel. 

“We need the real skills. If we’ve got the right people in that particular committee, things will be done without even forcing individuals to do their work. With Eskom’s load-shedding issues, the right people were appointed to positions and see where we are now.”

Vermeulen added that there were no quick fixes. 

“The reality is we are not going to see the results quickly. That’s the thing with infrastructure … It takes long to plan, design and construct. Unfortunately when you get in a position like Joburg is in now, that’s the implication … The key thing people must realise is what you do or don’t do today has a long term impact.”

The City of Johannesburg was implementing a structured 10-year turnaround strategy valued at around R30 billion, about R3bn a year, Nombuso Shabalala, the spokesperson for Johannesburg Water, said.

The programme would be rolled out in phases, starting smaller while contracts were finalised and capacity was established, then accelerating as implementation scaled up. Focus areas included upgrading and renewing pipelines and reservoirs, strengthening network maintenance and improving storage capacity, she said.

In the interim, Johannesburg Water had strengthened operational capacity by filling critical technical posts and appointing additional artisans to improve response times to leaks and bursts.

Forty-two leaking reservoirs had been identified and assessed, with 20 prioritised for urgent repair over the next few years, Shabalala said.

Smart flow controllers were being retrofitted on the outlets of 28 high-consumption reservoirs and towers to reduce losses and stabilise water levels. 

Conventional pressure-reducing valves that were non-operational due to vandalism or technical faults were being reinstated and refurbished. Smart pressure controllers were being installed at key network points to reduce excessive pressure, which contributed to pipe bursts.

Shabalala said that together, the interventions were intended to lower system pressure, reduce minimum night flows and significantly curb water losses across Johannesburg’s network.