Speaking to Channel Africa on Thursday, Director General of the Department of Water and Sanitation Sean Phillips said the widely cited figure of $25.25 billion in required investment covers only the country’s 105 worst performing municipalities and excludes major metros. Once metropolitan areas are included, he said the true backlog is likely to be at least double that amount.
Phillips explained that the water and sanitation challenges cannot be viewed separately. He pointed to Hammanskraal as an example. The community’s prolonged lack of safe drinking water has stemmed from the collapse of the Rooiwal wastewater treatment plant, owned by the City of Tshwane, which became dysfunctional after years of poor maintenance.
The plant has been overloaded with sewage far beyond its design capacity and has discharged untreated waste into the Apies River. Downstream, the Temba water treatment works relies on the same river for supply. Once pollution levels became too high for purification systems to cope, Hammanskraal’s taps effectively ran dry.
Phillips said this is why water and sanitation infrastructure must be assessed together. The $25.25 billion backlog refers to both sectors combined in the worst performing municipalities, and the full national figure is significantly higher.
Asked how such an enormous investment gap could be financed, Phillips said that like electricity, water is a trading service that is meant to be financially self sustaining. Consumers, including households, businesses, farmers and industries, purchase water and those revenues must cover costs of production, treatment, distribution, operations and maintenance.
Shifting water onto the national fiscus would require extraordinary increases in tax rates or deep reductions in other departments’ budgets, which he said is neither feasible nor politically possible.
He warned that the main reason the system is not financially sustainable is the very high level of non revenue water. In the department’s 2023 no drop report, municipalities on average lost nearly half of the water they paid to produce or purchased from water boards. Of this, about 32% is due to physical leaks, with some municipalities losing significantly more.
Phillips argued that the evidence does not support the view that people are too poor to pay for water. In rural areas where municipalities fail to supply water, residents often buy water from private vendors at prices far higher than municipal tariffs.
He said the real drivers of non revenue water are weak billing and revenue collection systems, poor financial management and chronic under investment in maintenance. Municipalities are not prioritising repairs to their distribution networks, allowing leaks to worsen and revenue losses to escalate.
Phillips acknowledged the severe impact water shortages are having on businesses, especially in Gauteng, where demand is already exceeding available supply. He said the department views this as a serious threat to economic growth, investment and long term competitiveness.
He added that while government continues to work on long term infrastructure solutions, citizens and businesses have a crucial role to play in reducing demand. He cited Cape Town’s successful Day Zero campaign during the 2018 drought as a model. Through strict water restrictions, vigorous public communication, the involvement of civic and business leaders and the naming of high water users, Cape Town achieved a 40% reduction in water consumption.
Phillips said that if Gauteng were able to reduce demand by even 15 to 20%, many current supply disruptions could be avoided. He noted that the fundamental cause of Gauteng’s water cuts is that consumption is exceeding supply capacity, and short term demand management is essential to stabilise the system while longer term investment is mobilised.
–ChannelAfrica–
