The announcement by water and sanitation minister Pemmy Majodina that water supply will be reduced in the City of Johannesburg from Thursday to dodge potential long-term water-shedding raises questions about the water budget and commitment to fixing and addressing maintenance problems.
This grand strategy will see water pressure being throttled between 9pm and 4am across Johannesburg to minimise unnecessary water use such as garden sprinkling, refilling swimming pool and other water-wasting activities.
While this is a necessary intervention to avoid a bigger calamity, the reality is that at the root of the water problems in Johannesburg is an ever-growing population, a decline in infrastructural maintenance and water theft. This begs the question, what tangible multipronged solutions will the department employ besides reducing water supply to residents?
As it stands, the city is forfeiting 40% of the supply of water it receives from Rand Water to these factors. According to the Johannesburg Water 2022/23 annual report, the water that was forfeited before reaching its intended destination — households — was 46.1%, with commercial users forfeiting up to 9.4% of water intended for them. The physical losses sat at 24.1%. This showed an increase in water losses from the previous financial year by 1.3%.
“This was mainly experienced in the Soweto region, as the analysis indicates an overall increase of 4.68% in total consumption for this region. This can mainly be ascribed to property leaks and leaking reservoirs.
“The 4.63% increase in Randburg was due to the increase in new developments. Water demand in the Midrand region increased by 16.24% year on year, which was attributed to the increase in developments as well as on-property leaks in the Ivory Park area,” said the report.
With a generous budget of R80.9bn, only R15.6bn was assigned to Johannesburg Water for operations, within which R2.6bn was allocated to the water budget. How is this budget justified for a city that reportedly has growing water problems and increased social infrastructure challenges such as the ever-growing number of informal settlements? Is the money ultimately appropriately utilised and managed in a way that serves its purpose? What are the practical plans that are tied to this budget with realistic time frames that will see the city make meaningful gains to arrest these issues?
Besides the basic service conundrum, the city has cash flow problems. The city’s council approved a R2.5bn loan from international monetary institution Agence Française de Développement in July this year after they identified a budget shortfall of R2.5bn. Clearly, something is not being done right, and its impact has arrived at the door of residents.
The continuing poor supply of water not only affects the public, but even institutions of justice such as the Constitutional Court where operations have recently been curtailed by a shortage of water. It has been a month now that the intermittent water supply has forced court proceedings to be moved online. This is an example of a manifestation of a bigger problem.
Rubber bullets were flying in the south of Johannesburg on Tuesday when officials from Joburg Water were attempting to cut illegal connections in Phumla Mqashi. The retaliation by the people of Phumla Mqashi — which loosely translates to “rest landlord/employee” — is an example of how the city is failing to clamp down on illegal conduct and enforce the law for the greater good of all residents. The sheer disregard for the law and the inability of law enforcers to act against perpetrators of crimes such as illegal connections and water theft has become costly for the city and its law-abiding citizens. The illegal connectors in Phumla Mqashi have no appetite to account to anyone, not even the officials who have probably left the problem to fester.
The report also cited a rise in damage to hydrants, car washers who connect illegally and homeless people as part of the problem, especially in the Johannesburg CBD. The issues that the city is citing are all well within its ability to remedy by simply enforcing the laws. However, we see increasingly how the city pleads victimhood to problems of their own making by simply not enforcing laws and regulations timeously and unapologetically. Water is a basic human right and one that we all cherish because without water there is no life.
It therefore makes sense that this should be a serious priority area for government and more specifically the City of Johannesburg. At the rate we are going, it is only a matter of time before we start seeing more people getting sick from poor quality of water, people dying from dehydration from lack of water supply, which will inevitably result in lawsuits against the government, further burdening the already over-stretched budget and leaving the problems unresolved.
The bottom line is we need intelligent and manageable plans to turn things around as we have seen with the likes of Eskom in electricity supply. If we can learn anything from the load-shedding saga, it is if we have a real plan and we have the right people at the helm and executing the plan, we can turn things around.
We can only hope that the department of water and sanitation will take a leaf out of the department of electricity's book and not merely pay lip service and employ superficial measures to an incredibly complex and dangerous real-life problem.
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