The truth about South Africa’s water crisis

Rand Water CEO Sipho Mosai explained that the water issues many South Africans face, including shortages and poor-quality drinking water, are due to municipal distribution challenges rather than bulk water suppliers.

In the latest instalment of PSG’s Think Big Series, Mosai outlined the roles each entity in South Africa’s water supply chain plays.

He explained that there are three “segments” in the water provision supply chain, starting at the top with the Department of Water and Sanitation (DWS).

The DWS is the custodian of all water resources in South Africa, including rivers and dams, which are considered national assets.

Therefore, the department has the responsibility to protect these resources and, most importantly, build infrastructure for impounding surface water. 

The DWS then sells this water to bulk water services providers, like Rand Water, who purify it in large quantities. 

These providers also build and maintain the infrastructure related to this role, including the purification works, the pipes, the pump stations and the large quantity reservoirs where the purified water is stored. 

Once the water is purified, the bulk suppliers sell it to municipalities, which distribute it to households and businesses.

“The department is responsible for the resource. We buy it, we purify it in bulk, and then we sell it to the municipalities,” Mosai summarised.

He further explained that the water crisis South Africa currently faces, which has seen areas of the country go without clean or running water for extended periods, lies in the last part of that process – municipal distribution.

“I think the distribution network challenges have been clearly articulated in various documents that we have in South Africa,” he said.

Mosai specifically referenced the damning Green Drop and No Drop reports that highlighted the country’s severe water challenges.

In 2022, the government’s Green Drop Report identified that 334 wastewater treatment works in South Africa were in a critical state based on a compliance score of less than 31%.

In addition, the 2023 No Drop Report revealed crucial insight into South Africa’s non-revenue water, which refers to the difference between the amount of water injected into the water supply system and the actual amount of water billed to customers.

This report found that the country’s non-revenue water increased from around 42% in 2014 and 2015 to above 46% between 2021 and 2023. 

“It’s a well-known and clearly understood challenge that, at the distribution level, we have high water losses,” Mosai said. 

Finding solutions

Both reports largely attributed these issues with South Africa’s water supply chain to ageing municipal infrastructure. 

“All the municipalities have acknowledged that the non-revenue water is high and we need to do something about it,” Mosai said.

He explained that it is this weak link in the supply chain that South Africans “feel” most clearly, as it directly affects the water supply to their homes and businesses.

“People feel like there is water in the system, but I am sitting here, I don’t have water – they look across they see a lot of water loss. These are the challenges that need to be attended to,” he said.

Water expert Dr Anthony Turton has previously explained that water outages experienced across the country are not due to a lack of water but rather the failure to get water from bulk suppliers to where it is consumed.

“It is not a water scarcity issue. It is an institutional failure issue,” he said. This is because nearly half of all water supplied in South Africa is estimated to be non-revenue.

Therefore, this water does not reach an end user but is, instead, lost through leakages and theft. 

This makes it increasingly difficult for bulk water suppliers to maintain sufficient pressure to get water from their facilities to reservoirs in major cities and the end user.

Mosai said Rand Water has taken an active role to be part of the solution to this problem.

“That is why we have established special purpose vehicles with our municipalities so that we are not saying that the problem is there, it’s not here,” he said. 

“We want to be part of the solution. We are partnering with them. We are meeting with them on a daily basis because people sometimes don’t understand the difference between Joburg Water and Rand Water.”