Water, water everywhere (in Joburg) but not a drop to drink

Despite overflowing dams and a summer more sodden than a wrestler’s jock strap, Joburg Water is still throttling water supply in some areas when demand is high – simply because it can’t manage its infrastructure properly.

And this, should you need reminding, is from the city now trying to hike water tariffs 13.9% next year.

But rather than outraged, mayor Dada Morero reckons we should be grateful. Rand Water is angling for a 15.8% tariff hike, and Eskom has been granted a 12.74% increase – so the City of Joburg, in all its benevolence, is actually doing us a favour by keeping price hikes about 10 percentage points above inflation.

Of course, Joburg Water would probably tell you that the increase will incentivise residents to use less water. After all, it frequently blames us for the crisis, saying we consume more than the global average. Only, that belies the fact that an estimated 35% of water is lost to leaks. And it obscures the fact that this is a crisis entirely of the city’s own making.

Chronic underinvestment has resulted in infrastructural decay that’s left Joburg Water unable to meet its service delivery obligations. The result? Frequent outages and water restrictions that have seen the city opt only for triage.

Consider these figures from the utility’s recent 2025/26 draft business plan. The immediate renewal backlog for infrastructure with a remaining lifespan of less than two years is R26.61bn. That’s precisely where it was when Currency wrote about it last year. More disturbing is when you consider that in 2021/22 it was R20.4bn. If R26.61bn looks like an improvement, factor in inflation, and you’ll see we’re basically standing still.

Actually, we’re moving backwards. Back in 2021/22, there were 42 reservoirs “leaking through the structural walls or pipework”. Some were deemed in “immediate” need of repair. Today, in a handy cut-and-paste for the drafters of the plan, there are 42 reservoirs leaking through their structural walls or pipework, some in need of immediate repair. 

Only what would have cost R330m to repair back then is now a R1.25bn fix-it job.

Then consider that, like last year, the utility still needs R58.8bn to replace critical assets, and upgrade networks and waste-water treatment works over the next 10 years. It’s better than 2021/22 on an inflation-adjusted basis, but to catch up would still cost a cool R5.9bn every year for 10 years. Yet the city’s entire capital budget for 2025 is just R2.8bn — and only R1bn-odd has been set aside for upgrades, renewals and new infrastructure.

Things aren’t about to get better: for the next five years, just R12.84bn is due to be spent for these upgrades — which is better than last year’s R9.5bn, but still less than half of what’s needed.

Nor should you believe the spiel in the business plan that we’re on the cusp of a “paradigm shift”. Joburg Water has been using those exact words since at least as far back as its 2021/22 business plan — and the only “shift” has been that more residents are digging their own boreholes. 

Risk schmisk

It is pretty clear from that 2021/22 plan why Joburg is in the position it’s in.

Tucked into the annexures is the utility’s risk register. Among the items flagged “very high risk” was the inadequate funding of infrastructure. So what, do you imagine, sits in the column for “risk treatment actions”? Nada.

Equally, while the city says there are “almost certain” health and safety risks arising from things like potable water contamination, there is no mitigation action plan in that table.

Most helpfully, the risk to service delivery (in part because of a lack of funding) simply required “ongoing monitoring”. And “unsustainable water losses” (almost certain; very high risk) again had no action points.

Then there’s the risk to security of supply. Action plan: engage with the city authorities around board evaluations and building internal forensics capacity; institute annual board self-examinations; and develop a board training plan. So about as useful as a bicycle to a poorly co-ordinated sloth.

In short, what you’re witnessing here is that a whole bunch of doing nothing has left us with a water system that is, not to put too fine a point on it, buggered. And the authorities responsible are now hiking rates partly to play catch-up. Which is rather like hiking VAT to make up the shortfall from years of wanton spending.

You’ll be happy to know that the drafters of the 2025/26 plan, despite largely copy-pasting the earlier plan from 2021/22, have at least given more thought to risk mitigation. Which is just as well, since the strategic risk table in the report points to a “very high” risk of the failure of the city’s fix-it plan, with the potential for “reaching breaking point”. 

And this eventuality would culminate in an apocalyptic “collapse of water and sanitation service delivery”.

There are, of course, a multitude of reasons for this – not least of which are problems in the relationship between the city and Joburg Water. The Joburg Water board, for instance, has no sight of the city strategy that is supposed to inform its own planning, and little autonomy in decision-making and leadership. 

Also problematic is the “failure to attain control over Joburg Water’s own bank account”. And a lack of defined policies around the brilliant (if obvious) idea of ringfencing Joburg Water funds for Joburg Water use. So clearly that’s going to take longer than anticipated.

Of course, not every part of Joburg Water’s plan is all bad. Like the ringfencing idea, for example, or the fact that the city is (belatedly) considering more innovative ways of operating within its financial constraints. It is looking at performance-based contracts to end leaks, for example, where service providers will secure a portion of the financial savings their interventions make. Which seems smart enough — but even that is lacking in a sense of immediacy.

There is, of course, a dash of the ludicrous – a “you are the strongest link” employee campaign, for example. But part of the problem with the business plan is that it often feels as though the critical problem at the heart of it all – service delivery – perpetually takes a back seat to other priorities. So the urgent need to ramp up infrastructure spending, surely a priority all by itself, is shoehorned into categories like “operating in a manner that promotes environmental conservation and sustainability”, and “utilising infrastructure delivery to create jobs”.

As Outa’s Julius Kleynhans recently told Currency, municipalities should be job enablers, not job creators; their primary focus should be on their basic mandate – in this case, making sure there is water in the taps. The rest surely follows.

Vetkoek and polony

The jumble of ideas arises from the political gobbledygook in which the entire 258-page business plan is framed. With apologies to Winston Churchill, the conceptual framework is a riddle of acronyms, wrapped in a logical mystery, inside a bureaucratic enigma.

See, the plan takes “political direction” from just about every meaningless plan ever drawn up by the city: you’ve got the Growth and Development Strategy (GDS) 2040, the Integrated Development Plan (IDP) 2021-2026, the Service Delivery and Budget Implementation Plan (SDBIP) 2024/25 and Morero’s 11 Mayoral Priorities (mind the capitals).

It all coalesces in this eloquent work of peak gibberish: “The focal point of the business plan is to accelerate the 2024/25 strategic course of the GLU as outlined in support of the 2021/26 IDP read with the GDS.” The GLU, of course, being our government du jour. 

Need that explained? Okay, well, the plan includes the four GDS outcomes and outputs, nine of the mayoral priorities, seven strategic goals along with seven strategic objectives, as well as five strategic shifts that inform a turnaround strategy, which appears distinct from the business plan. And it faces 17 high-level strategic risks, one of which – in an ouroboros of logic – is the wholesale failure of the five strategic shifts.

Remember Simba’s vetkoek and polony chips? It makes about as much sense as that. And will leave you with just as much indigestion.

Get beyond the double-speak, and the plan is a depressing read. Its analysis of the status quo is a stark reminder of the failure of Joburg Water and the city authorities more generally. 

Ultimately their best stab at implementing a workable strategy seems to be kicking the can down the road – waiting for future funding to complete maintenance that is desperately needed now. Interventions like ringfencing funds, or the utility taking “full responsibility” for the entire customer value chain will help. But given where we are, it’s simply not enough.

Which is why Joburg Water is looking to hike its rates by well above inflation. If that makes you angry, it should. We’ve got to where we are through neglect, mismanagement and the questionable allocation of resources.

The only way out now, the city’s officials believe, is to bleed the ratepayer. All while yet more of our water gushes down our potholed roads, into our polluted stormwater drains. At our expense.