South Africa’s dams are almost full. According to the Department of Water and Sanitation (DWS), at the end of June they stood at 96.6% of capacity. By any normal measure, that should mean a good year for water security. Instead, the country is sliding into a water crisis that will eclipse load-shedding, and the dam levels prove the point rather than deny it. The problem, always, is whether the country can get water to a tap, treat what comes back out, and pay for the pipes in between.
The numbers in the Centre for Risk Analysis’s May/June 2026 Macro Review, Pressure Building: South Africa’s Gathering Water Crisis, make for uncomfortable, but undoubtedly necessary, reading. Nearly 28% of households experienced water interruptions lasting more than 48 hours at a time in 2025, and 20% went without water for a cumulative 15 days or more over the year. The DWS recorded non-revenue water – water that is supplied but never billed – at 47.3%. Municipalities are losing money on almost half the water flowing through their own systems, mostly through leaks, theft, and poor metering, rather than through any shortage of supply.
Wastewater treatment shows the same pattern of decline. In 2011, 40 of South Africa’s wastewater treatment works earned an “excellent” rating under the DWS Green Drop programme. By 2024 that number had fallen to 14. Over the same period, the number of plants rated in a “critical state” rose from 317 to 396. Put simply, nearly half the country’s wastewater systems are now failing, and the share doing an excellent job has dropped by two thirds. This did not happen through lack of money; National Treasury allocates almost R22 billion to the DWS for 2026/27 alone, rising to R27.9 billion by 2028/29, and provinces reported R34 billion in secured capital budgets against a national repair bill estimated at R13.3 billion. The funding exists, but the results and outcomes continue to decline.
The pattern across provinces tells the governance story. The Auditor-General’s 2024 audit of the 135 municipalities responsible for water and sanitation found only 23 with clean audits. In the Free State, Mpumalanga, the Northern Cape and North West, more than half of the water service authorities received qualified, adverse or disclaimed opinions. The Western Cape stands apart. It holds most of the country’s clean audits, its municipalities collect 94.5% of billed revenue against a national average of 83.9%, and its Green Drop score for wastewater sits at 72%, more than double the Free State’s 19% and well ahead of the Northern Cape’s 26%.
The costs are already showing up in the economy, and not just in household inconvenience. The DWS puts agriculture’s share of national water consumption at 61%. Agriculture, mining and manufacturing together employ more than three million people, 18% of the workforce, and all three sectors depend on water that they increasingly cannot rely on. Anglo American blamed a 9% drop in platinum production at Rustenburg in 2023 on a five-day water stoppage. Deloitte’s mining research found that water problems accounted for 15% of unplanned downtime at some operations. Libstar’s Dickon Hall Foods plant, which makes sauces and chutneys, had to truck in water so often that the additional cost reached R17 million, and the company eventually moved production from Johannesburg to the Western Cape, where the infrastructure holds up.
Government’s own figures show it understands the scale of the problem. In December, Minister Majodina told Parliament that clearing the national maintenance backlog would cost R400 billion. But money alone will not fix a system where technical posts go unfilled, water safety plans exist on paper only, and procurement decisions favour political loyalty over engineering competence. Only 40% of water supply systems nationally have a water safety plan in place at all, and implementation of the required mitigation measures is close to non-existent everywhere outside the Western Cape and Gauteng.
Agriculture, mining and manufacturing together generate roughly R1.38 trillion a year, 18% of GDP. Even a conservative estimate that 0.5% to 2% of that output is lost to water-supply disruption puts the annual production cost at R7 billion to R28 billion. Add the R26 billion a year that minister Majodina has confirmed is lost through non-revenue water, and the country is shedding somewhere between R33 billion and R54 billion a year, before a single new pipe is laid.
Load-shedding took more than a decade to move from denial to national emergency, and by the time Eskom’s failures were acknowledged as a crisis, the economic damage was already done. Water is following in the same way, except the consequences of failure are more immediate and less forgiving. Businesses can install diesel generators, but there is no generator for a burst sewer main or a contaminated supply. South Africa does not have a water shortage. It has a shortage of competence and political will, and unless municipal governance is fixed alongside the pipes, the R400 billion bill will keep growing, while the taps run dry.
[Image: https://www.pexels.com/photo/photo-of-gray-faucet-2339722/]
If you like what you have just read, support the Daily Friend