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Bulk water in balance, local deficits still weigh on water sector
Episode 50
Friday, 15 May, 2026
While South Africa's raw water supply remains in balance with existing demands on a national scale, localised deficits remain – with municipal water services reliability declining sharply – and water board debt is increasing. This has resulted continued worsening water services disruptions, sewage spills and poor water quality in many areas, as highlighted in the most recent release of the Department of Water and Sanitation's (DWS's) Green Drop Report. The report shows that there has been an increase in the percentage of municipal wastewater systems in a critical state of performance, from 39% in 2022 to 47% in the 2025. During her Budget Debate on Friday, Water and Sanitation Minister Pemmy Majodina said that overdue debts from municipalities to water boards have also deteriorated. As at March, overdue debt, excluding current invoices, amounted to R23-billion, while total debt exceeded R27-billion, an increase from R24-billion of total debt reported in July 2025. This is despite ongoing interventions, with water boards increasingly implementing credit control measures, including throttling water supply to non-paying municipalities and attaching municipal bank accounts. Majodina said she has also led coordinated engagements with Premiers, Mayors and Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs MECs to improve payment compliance, while National Treasury has implemented the withholding of equitable share allocations for the worst non-paying municipalities, which has affected 62 municipalities to date. Turning to the municipal services decline, Majodina pointed out that while most people now have access to a tap, water often does not come out of the tap or is not safe to drink. To mitigate the challenge at the reticulation level, President Cyril Ramaphosa's National Water Action Plan targets reforms to the way in which the services are delivered to improve their financial sustainability and to ensure that they are effectively managed by staff with the required competencies. The action plan focuses on the ring-fencing of revenue from the sale of water, supporting the operation, maintenance, upgrading and long-term sustainability of municipal water services and addressing crime, corruption and sabotage in the water sector. The DWS will also make increasing use of its water boards and other implementing agents such as the Development Bank of Southern Africa to assist struggling municipalities to implement projects more expeditiously. The focus of the increased support and intervention will be on the worst performing 107 municipalities in terms of the full 2023 Blue Drop and full 2025 Green Drop reports. The department is also supporting broader institutional and governance reforms within the water sector, including support for National Treasury's Metro Trading Service reforms and technical guidance on ringfencing municipal water services as sustainable trading functions. "We also support some of the metropolitan municipalities with major strategic infrastructure projects, including the Klipdrift water treatment works in Hammanskraal, in Tshwane, as well as the Welbedacht pipeline in Mangaung," Majodina said. Phase 1 of the Welbedacht pipeline was completed in June 2025 at a cost of R585-million, improving water supply reliability to Mangaung. Phase 2, which comprises a 71 km expansion estimated at R1.6-billion, is in advanced planning, with implementation scheduled from 2027 to 2032. In addition, the DWS initiated a nationwide programme to accelerate access to water services for unserved communities, many of which are in rural areas. The programme seeks to implement rapid, cost-effective and appropriate interventions such as groundwater development, spring protection and rainwater harvesting, in addition to extensions of existing water supply systems. Substantial work has been done to identify communities and potential water sources where there is no formal potable water infrastructure or where existing systems are non-function...
