An independent, volunteer-led testing programme has found that most of the sewage works it sampled are still discharging polluted effluent into South Africa’s rivers, even as drinking water quality holds steady.
On 10 December 2025, the civil rights organisation AfriForum released its 2025 Water Quality Watch report, the latest in a series of independent tests of municipal water and sewage systems carried out by its volunteer branches. The headline finding was blunt. Of the 109 sewage treatment plants sampled across the country, 94, or 86 percent, released effluent that was still polluted with sewage. Only 14 percent produced effluent clean enough to be discharged safely into rivers and streams.
The report arrived only a week after the Auditor-General told Parliament that 99 percent of the wastewater treatment works it assessed had failed at least one effluent quality standard. Two very different assessments, one by state auditors and one by volunteers with sample bottles, have reached essentially the same conclusion: South Africa’s sewage works are failing on a national scale.
How the testing works
AfriForum’s network of around 160 branches collected samples in August from municipal drinking water taps and from the outflows of sewage treatment plants. Drinking water was tested in 175 towns and cities. The results were compared against the standards for safe drinking water and for treated effluent.
This is a form of citizen science. It does not replace the Department of Water and Sanitation’s official Blue Drop and Green Drop assessments, which audit the full management of each system, and a single sample taken on a single day can only show conditions at that moment. But repeated sampling over several years, by the same network and with consistent methods, produces a useful independent check on official data, especially in years when official reports are delayed. AfriForum has published similar results since at least 2021, and earlier rounds found that around 81 percent of sewage discharges were not adequately treated. The 2025 figure suggests that, if anything, the situation is worsening.
Five years without a clean sample
Some of the most striking findings concern particular provinces. According to the report, neither the Free State nor the Eastern Cape has produced a single adequately treated effluent sample in five years of AfriForum testing. That means that every sewage works sampled in those provinces over that period was discharging polluted water into the environment at the time it was tested.
The Free State is home to towns along the Vaal, Modder and Caledon rivers, and the Eastern Cape includes metros such as Nelson Mandela Bay and Buffalo City, where beaches and estuaries have repeatedly been affected by sewage spills. In both provinces, municipal finances are under severe strain and many water services authorities have struggled to retain qualified process controllers and engineers.
Drinking water: stable, but fragile
The drinking water results were better. AfriForum found that 88 percent of samples were safe for human consumption, a slight improvement on 87 percent in 2024. That still means that roughly one in eight people with access to municipal tap water may have been exposed to unsafe water at some point in 2025.
AfriForum’s environmental affairs adviser, Marais de Vaal, warned against reading the stable result as good news. In his view the apparent stability is fragile, because the same rivers that receive polluted effluent are the sources from which the next towns downstream draw their drinking water. As pollution in source water rises, treatment becomes more difficult and more expensive, and the margin for error at drinking water plants shrinks.
Who pays
That cost does not stay inside the treatment works. The report notes that water boards expect bulk water tariffs to rise by 10 percent or more in the coming year, increases that municipalities are likely to pass on to households and businesses. Part of the reason is the rising cost of treating polluted raw water. In effect, residents and businesses downstream are paying twice: once through their municipal rates for sewage treatment that is not happening properly, and again through higher water tariffs to clean up the consequences.
The pollution also carries costs that are harder to measure. Farmers irrigating from polluted rivers face risks to crops and exports. Tourism around rivers, dams and beaches suffers when water is visibly contaminated. Communities that use rivers directly for washing, fishing or recreation face health risks from bacteria such as E. coli. And aquatic ecosystems, already under pressure from mining, agriculture and urban runoff, lose their ability to recover.
Competence, not paperwork
AfriForum’s recommendations focus on management rather than new policy. De Vaal argued that reversing the decline requires competence and accountability rather than more paperwork, and that maintenance of pipes, pump stations, reservoirs and treatment works, along with protection of water sources, is where municipalities are failing most.
The organisation was critical of parts of the Water Services Amendment Bill, which was tabled in Parliament in October and proposes, among other things, a licensing system for water service providers and a clearer separation between municipalities as water services authorities and the bodies that actually run the systems. AfriForum’s view is that the Bill targets operational, financial and procurement failures but overlooks the fact that some municipalities already meet standards under existing law, and that enforcing current rules would go a long way. It also called for communities to act as custodians of their water systems, using independent results to monitor, report and challenge failures.
The role of citizen science
That last point resonates with the MAP Forum’s own work. The Forum grew out of efforts to monitor and protect the Moreleta, Apies and Pienaars rivers in Tshwane, and earlier this year it announced the formal registration of the Citizen Science Association for Southern Africa, which aims to support exactly this kind of community-based monitoring. Volunteer sampling cannot replace a properly functioning regulator, but it can keep pressure on municipalities between official reports, give residents evidence when they lay complaints, and help journalists and Parliament ask sharper questions.
The official picture will be updated when the Department of Water and Sanitation publishes its next full Green Drop assessment. The department’s 2022 Green Drop report classified roughly two in five of the country’s wastewater systems as being in a critical state. If the independent results of 2025 are any guide, that figure is unlikely to have improved. For the rivers that carry the country’s wastewater, and for the people who drink from them further downstream, the message of this year’s Water Quality Watch is that the problem is not getting smaller.
References
Engineering News: AfriForum report shows 86% of sewage treatment plants release polluted water into rivers (10 December 2025): https://newsletter.en.creamermedia.com/article/afriforum-report-shows-86-of-sewage-treatment-plants-release-polluted-water-into-rivers-2025-12-10
Engineering News: Independent reports highlight decline in water systems, wastewater treatment plants (17 January 2025): https://www.engineeringnews.co.za/article/independent-blue-green-drops-show-water-quality-decline-2025-01-17
eNCA: AfriForum finds 81% of sewage not adequately treated: https://www.enca.com/news/sas-water-crisis-afriforum-finds-81-sewage-not-adequately-treated
TimesLIVE: South Africa faces crisis as 81% of sewage discharge not adequately treated (15 November 2023): https://www.timeslive.co.za/news/south-africa/2023-11-15-south-africa-faces-crisis-as-81-of-sewage-discharge-not-adequately-treated-afriforum/
Sowetan: Treatment plants dumping sewage into our rivers, AfriForum study finds (25 November 2021): https://www.sowetan.co.za/news/south-africa/2021-11-25-treatment-plants-dumping-sewage-into-our-rivers-afriforum-study-finds
Parliamentary Monitoring Group: Water Sector Report, AGSA briefing (2 December 2025): https://pmg.org.za/committee-meeting/42181/
MAP Forum: Official registration of CSA_SA and invitation to participate in next steps (11 October 2025): https://mapforum.co.za/official-registration-of-csa_sa-and-invitation-to-participate-in-next-steps/