Joburg mayor’s R32 billion plan to fix water crisis

Johannesburg’s mayor told South African lawmakers that his administration has raised the budget for fixing the city’s water infrastructure and is accelerating a turnaround plan days after residents protested against lack of supply.

The municipality plans to raise R10.2 billion in loans over the next 10 years to finance repairing its water infrastructure, Executive Mayor Dada Morero said Friday in a presentation to lawmakers. The city has a plan to spend R32 billion on water. 

“We are in year one of the turnaround strategy,” Morero said. The city plans public-private partnerships and may seek investments from development-finance institutions for its plans, he said. 

South Africa’s biggest city has been struggling to provide steady supply of water, prompting recurrent protests.

Morero was heckled by community members on Thursday when he visited Coronationville, one of the areas about 8 kilometers north-west of the city center where residents closed roads with burning tires last week to protest outages.

In July, large parts of the city were without water as reservoirs struggled to recover from scheduled maintenance and after criminals vandalized a key pipeline.

Last year, a section of Johannesburg was left without water for as long as 11 days after lightning hit a pump station. Its water utility has a R26.9 billion infrastructure backlog, municipal documents seen by Bloomberg last year showed. 

Morero’s presentation “unequivocally proves he is unfit to be mayor,” Stephen Moore, a spokesman for water and sanitation in the Democratic Alliance, which is in the opposition in the city council, said in a statement.

“He does not have a ready plan for residents of Johannesburg, even while taps sit dry.”

The city is working on a plan with the National Treasury to ring-fence some revenue from water and electricity to reinvest it in those services, Morero said in an interview with broadcaster Newzroom Afrika.