Eleven months after its launch, the Vaal Corporation Water Utility is about to take over Emfuleni’s water staff and assets. The backlog is enormous, but the department now calls it a model for the rest of the country. In November…
The Bronkhorstspruit treatment works ran without disinfection for 21 days, and nearly 600 people, many of them small children, fell ill. Parliament has now heard that water in parts of central Pretoria was also not being disinfected. For 21 days,…
South Africans vote in local government elections on 4 November. After a year of dry taps, sewage spills and missing money, water is one of the issues that could decide who runs the country’s municipalities. Here is what the main…
This Sunday is World Rivers Day. For the MAP Forum, it is a moment to take stock of the three rivers that gave us our name, and to ask what it will take to bring them back to health. World…
Invasive alien trees drink water that should be flowing into rivers and dams. In the Western Cape, teams of women clearing them have helped return more than 3.3 billion litres to the system. It is one of the most cost-effective…
None of Mangaung’s 13 sewage works is functioning properly, one discharges about 25 million litres of raw sewage a day, and the city loses nearly half the water it buys. Ahead of the local elections, the Free State capital is…
Parliament has taken the Water Services Amendment Bill to communities in Mpumalanga, North West and Limpopo, and the response has been overwhelming support. But residents want the new law backed by real capacity and enforcement. It is not often that…
With local elections due in November, Johannesburg’s dry taps have become a political weapon. While poorer residents chase tankers, wealthier ones are drilling boreholes, and both responses carry a cost for the city. Three months before South Africa’s local government…
An investigation into Nelson Mandela Bay, Buffalo City and Kouga has found sewage contamination at beaches and rivers that affects people’s constitutional rights. One river site recorded more than 600,000 E. coli per 100 millilitres. For coastal cities, sewage pollution…
Cape Town has committed R5.39 billion this year to water and sanitation infrastructure, including the country’s largest sewer upgrade. It is a case study in what happens when a city treats pipes as a priority. While much of the country’s…
National Treasury has withheld July transfers from 69 municipalities that are not paying Eskom, water boards and other creditors, and is redirecting money straight to the suppliers. Two water boards were reportedly close to collapse. On Wednesday 8 July 2026,…
A broken sewer pipe in Pretoria East has been pouring raw sewage into the Moreleta River for months. A repair in March failed within weeks. For the MAP Forum, this is the river where it all began. The Moreleta River…
Johannesburg has lost more than R10 billion worth of drinking water in four years, with losses consistently above 45 percent. The Auditor-General blames a failure to maintain the network, and says it cannot even be sure how bad the losses…
Municipalities now owe the country’s water boards more than R27 billion, R23 billion of it overdue. The department’s budget for 2026/27 shows how that debt, and a shrinking budget, shape what can be built. When a household does not pay…