EDITORIAL | While El Niño heads our way, Gauteng haemorrhages water - TimesLIVE
South Africa is renowned as one of the 30 driest countries in the world, an inherently water-scarce nation operating under a fragile balance of supply and demand.
As the South African Weather Service warns of an impending El Niño weather phenomenon, which will bring hot, dry conditions and below-normal summer rainfall, that balance threatens to tip into catastrophe.
Yet, as heatwaves loom and dam storage drops, the primary message coming from municipal communications is monotonous and predictable: consumers must turn off their taps and use water sparingly.
While citizen conservation is vital, asking households to shave off litres while billions of litres pour into the gutters through broken municipal infrastructure is no longer just ineffective — it is an abdication of governance.
The latest department of water and sanitation (DWS) Water Security Dashboard for Gauteng, published on October 30, paints a grim picture. Under national standards, non-revenue water (NRW), potable water for which municipalities receive zero income, should sit below 25%, with real physical losses (pipe bursts, leaks, reservoir overflows) capped at under 15%.
Instead, Gauteng is haemorrhaging its most precious resource. Ekurhuleni leads the province, yet still records a high 33.8% NRW. Johannesburg hovers dangerously near 46% to 49% NRW. Emfuleni records catastrophic losses exceeding 70%.
South Africa cannot pray away an El Niño with empty reservoirs and porous reticulation networks.
When nearly half of a metro’s treated water never reaches a billing meter, the crisis is not merely a natural drought, it is a structural governance failure.
In Tshwane, AfriForum pointed out last week that according to the DWS Platform for a Water Secure Gauteng, 35% of Tshwane’s bulk water supply is lost due to physical leaks alone, more than double the 15% national target. When coupled with illegal connections and meter under-recording, Tshwane’s total water loss hits an astounding 43.8%.
In a letter to Tshwane city manager Johann Mettler, AfriForum said in just the past month, field reports catalogued at least 17 major infrastructure failures across Tshwane. These were not minor drips.
One was a burst 1,000mm water main near Pretoria railway station and the other was a leak on a 700mm trunk line in Equestria.
As Marais de Vaal, AfriForum’s adviser for environmental affairs, correctly observed: “Residents can turn off their taps, but only the Tshwane metro can repair burst pipes and properly maintain the infrastructure.”
Telling Tshwane residents to restrict their domestic consumption while thousands of litres per hour erupt from unmaintained main lines is short-sighted. Restricting consumer supply cannot serve as a permanent band-aid for decades of deferred maintenance.
South Africa cannot pray away an El Niño with empty reservoirs and porous reticulation networks.
If municipal leadership across Gauteng expects citizens to co-operate during the coming dry months, they must match public sacrifices with internal accountability.
Municipalities must provide public, verifiable tracking of logged leaks against actual repairs, eliminating the current pattern of “no data provided” on provincial monitoring platforms.
Also, budgets allocated for pipe replacement and pressure management must be protected from diversion into administrative overheads.
Municipal managers must provide clear timelines and capital expenditure schedules to systematically replace ageing reticulation infrastructure.
We cannot control the clouds, but local government controls the pipes. Until municipal leaders work as hard to plug their system leaks as citizens do to conserve every drop, Gauteng’s water security will remain on paper only.
