EDITORIAL | Municipalities should embark on aggressive drives to ensure customers pay for essential services

Access to safe and clean drinking water and sanitation are recognised by the United Nations as human rights, and South Africa has made great strides to ensure most of its citizens have access to these rights. 

But everything that is provided comes at a cost. Municipalities buy water they supply to residents from various water utilities. In South Africa, Rand Water provides bulk potable water to more than 11-million people in Gauteng, parts of Mpumalanga, Free State and North West. 

For Rand Water to continue to provide water of high quality that ranks among the best in the world, its customers should continue to pay. 

A number of municipalities are in debt to the tune of R3bn to Rand Water. The non-payment has forced Rand Water to embark on a drastic action of water throttling to non-paying municipalities. The affected municipalities are:

• Emfuleni and Lesedi local municipalities in the Sedibeng district municipality in Gauteng;
• Rand West City and Merafong City local municipalities in the West Rand district municipality, also in Gauteng; and
• Govan Mbeki local municipality in Mpumalanga. 

Rand Water is not alone. Eskom said at the end of March 2023, arrear municipal debt was at R58.5bn, a substantial 30% year-on-year increase from R44.7bn in March 2022.

Rand Water already reduced the water supply last week and is threatening to reduce water supply even further if the debt is not settled or if payment agreements are not obeyed by March 25. 

In 2020 Rand Water reduced the water pressure in several areas in Mpumalanga due to the Govan Mbeki municipality’s inability to settle outstanding debts. Though the water pressure was greatly reduced in several towns, parts of Bethal and Leandra were left completely without water. This forced residents to get by without running water for weeks at a time. Those who religiously and without fail paid the municipality for the services felt hard done by.

AfriForum has threatened legal action against Rand Water for its latest bout of reducing water pressure, arguing that in most cases consumers pay their water accounts faithfully to the municipality, but the municipality fails to pay Rand Water. 

While the action taken by Rand Water is drastic and affects thousands of paying residents, it usually forces municipalities to reach out to Rand Water to make arrangements to settle the debt. But this water throttling should not be encouraged. In May last year, AfriForum obtained an order from the Pretoria high court declaring invalid and illegal Rand Water's reduction of water supply.

However, sight should also not be lost that there is a culture of non-payment in some municipalities, which was entrenched just before the dawn of democracy. As an example, the City of Tshwane said its debtors’ book stood at R20.5bn in February 2023. Tshwane said this debt made it difficult to deliver essential and basic services. 

Rand Water is not alone. Eskom said at the end of March 2023, municipal arrears were at R58.5bn, a substantial 30% year-on-year increase from R44.7bn in March 2022. 

Municipalities should embark on aggressive drives to push that their customers pay for the essential services they use, so that Rand Water does not find itself in the situation where towns go by for weeks without water, affecting residents’ ability to maintain good hygiene and avoiding diseases caused by lack of access to clean water.

They can also apply to the National Treasury for the debt relief.