The South African Human Rights Commission says Gauteng’s taps run dry because of broken systems rather than a shortage of water, and it has singled out the money going to tankers instead of repairs.
A report released while the taps were dry
On Monday 2 November, two days before South Africans voted in local government elections, the South African Human Rights Commission released its inquiry report on water and sanitation in Gauteng. The Mail & Guardian described a 171-page document based on hearings held in May, and reported that inquiry chair Henk Boshoff noted the irony of presenting it while parts of the province had gone days or weeks without water.
The timing made the point for him. Daily Maverick reported that on the day of the release, residents of Parktown West and nearby areas who had gone up to 12 weeks without tap water protested at Johannesburg Water’s offices in Newtown. The next day Rand Water announced widespread disruptions across Ekurhuleni, Tshwane and Lesedi, and in three Mpumalanga municipalities, after a power outage cut electricity to its Mapleton pumping station. According to the same report, Rand Water blamed a failure to repair a breaker. Boshoff said he had expected municipalities to lift their performance ahead of the elections and that the opposite had happened, according to the Mail & Guardian.
The inquiry’s central argument is simple and uncomfortable. Gauteng is not short of water, at least for now. The Department of Water and Sanitation told the commission that resources are sufficient for current demand, although the Mail & Guardian noted that the department expects more supply will be needed in future. What fails is everything between the source and the tap.
Where the system breaks
The commission traced the outages to pressures along the whole chain: ageing infrastructure, high losses, too little reservoir and pumping capacity, electricity interruptions, bulk supply failures and weak municipal distribution, as Jacaranda FM summarised it. The Mail & Guardian reported that when Rand Water’s Palmiet and Zuikerbosch pump stations failed in February and a major pipe burst, some municipalities recovered slowly because their reservoirs were already depleted and their systems had no slack.
The money is stark. The National reported that Johannesburg loses about 44.8 percent of its water, worth an estimated R2.82 billion, against a National Treasury recommended range of 15 to 30 percent. Boshoff said that loss is bigger than the water entity’s entire annual capital budget, according to the Mail & Guardian, which put the city’s renewal backlog at R27 billion, with about R2.5 billion a year needed over the next decade against a capital budget of about R1.7 billion. Tshwane loses about 39 percent, valued at R1.7 billion, and has an infrastructure backlog of about R23 billion, The National reported.
Smaller municipalities are under even more strain relative to their size. Sowetan reported that Merafong loses 41 percent of its water, costing about R143 million, while Jacaranda FM reported that the municipality owes Rand Water an estimated R1.5 billion and collects only 52.1 percent of its revenue. In Emfuleni, Boshoff cited an overall vacancy rate of 62 percent and 50 percent in the finance unit, according to Sowetan. The report also records shortages of engineers, scientists, process controllers and artisans across the province. The Star reported that the commission described municipalities as “cost shock absorbers”, spending their resources repeatedly on failures that could have been prevented.
The commission was openly impatient with the response so far. The report questions whether the many plans, forums and task teams have improved anything on the ground. “Another meeting will not fix the pipe,” Boshoff said, in a line carried by the Mail & Guardian.
The tanker bill
The most striking money finding concerns water tankers, which the commission says have moved from emergency response to a routine part of supply, effectively a road-based water distribution network. The National reported that Tshwane has more than 500 informal settlements, of which 170 receive water through 282 tankers, about 1,150 stationary 5,000-litre tanks and 106 stationary 10,000-litre tanks. In Johannesburg about 52 tankers and 1,500 stationary tanks serve more than 300 informal settlements, some of them for years, according to the Mail & Guardian.
Tshwane’s spending on tankers rose from R47 million in 2021/22 to R777 million in 2024/25, the Mail & Guardian and Sowetan reported. The outlets differ on what happened next. The Mail & Guardian reported R362 million for 2025/26, while Sowetan and Jacaranda FM reported R326 million. Either figure is a large drop from the peak and still roughly seven times the 2021/22 level.
The commission accepted, Sowetan reported, that informal settlements create a genuine need for alternative supplies, but it does not want tankers to become a permanent substitute for pipes. “Stop spending money on water tankering,” Boshoff said, according to Sowetan, adding that he understood the need in emergencies. The commission wants guidelines covering quality, accessibility, procurement, cost effectiveness, monitoring and accountability, Jacaranda FM reported, with Sowetan naming the department, Gauteng’s cooperative governance department and the three metros as the bodies to draw them up.
Boshoff went further at the launch than the report does. Jacaranda FM quoted him saying that tankering had become “a brazen form of corruption and financial mismanagement”, and both Jacaranda FM and Sowetan reported him alleging that some service providers and officials sabotage municipal infrastructure to create demand for tanker contracts. These are the commissioner’s own statements, as reported by those outlets. The Mail & Guardian reported that the report itself did not reach a conclusion on corruption allegations in tanker procurement because the evidence was insufficient, and Joburg ETC likewise said the commission lacked enough evidence to prove corruption. None of the reports we read named any company or individual in connection with these claims. On a separate question, the Mail & Guardian reported that the commission queried the financial relationship between Johannesburg Water and the city, but said the evidence does not establish unlawful diversion of funds.
The Apies and the state of wastewater
For readers of this forum, the wastewater chapter comes closest to home. The National reported that Tshwane scored 33.8 percent in the Green Drop assessment, that its Daspoort works runs at 119 percent of design capacity, and that the Sunderland Ridge, Zeekoegat, Baviaanspoort, Klipgat, Godrich and Rooiwal works are subject to regulatory directives, criminal proceedings or both. Discharge from Rooiwal into the Apies River has degraded the raw water reaching the Temba treatment works, according to the same report.
The report also records the Bronkhorstspruit outbreak, in which The National said more than 80 residents were hospitalised after the treatment works ran for 21 days without chlorine. A Daily Maverick opinion piece by Anthony Kaziboni, citing figures to 26 October, put the number treated for gastrointestinal illness at 833, including 328 children aged four and under, with no deaths reported.
Tshwane is far from alone. Johannesburg scored 48.8 percent in the Green Drop assessment and its Ennerdale works runs at 206 percent of design capacity, The National reported, while Mogale City’s 29.9 percent places it in the critical range, according to Sowetan. “All Gauteng municipalities have challenges in relation to water treatment works,” Boshoff said, as reported by The National. The commission wants failing works ranked by their risk to human health, water resources and downstream users, the Mail & Guardian reported, so that the worst are fixed first.
Where things are working
The report is not uniformly bleak, and it would be unfair to read it that way. Ekurhuleni’s water losses of about 25.4 percent, valued at R1.27 billion, fall inside the Treasury range, and it scored 81.7 percent in the Green Drop assessment, the Mail & Guardian reported, although seven of its 17 works are at or above design capacity and about a quarter of its reservoirs hold less than a day of storage.
The Star reported that the commission found sound water management in Midvaal, and that it acknowledged better wastewater operations and fewer sewage spills in Emfuleni, while saying major upgrades are still needed there. Johannesburg’s monitored drinking water compliance was strong, the Mail & Guardian reported, though the evidence did not include samples from tankers or static tanks.
Tshwane also earned a measure of credit. The National reported that it gave the commission more detailed operational information than most municipalities, and that the report warned against concluding that Tshwane has more interruptions simply because it recorded more of them. The commission acknowledged corrective measures in both big metros but said they have not yet delivered adequate or sustainable results.
Who can make it happen
The report makes eight overarching recommendations to 19 state and sector institutions, including all nine Gauteng water services authorities, according to the Mail & Guardian. They include stronger technical capacity, a more resilient bulk system and better protection of infrastructure against theft and vandalism. The National reported that Emfuleni, Merafong and Rand West City are named for targeted financial recovery measures involving the Municipal Financial Recovery Service. None of the reports we read gave deadlines, but The National said the commission will monitor implementation and report publicly on progress.
Getting the municipalities to the table was itself a struggle. Daily Maverick reported that eight of the nine municipal or city managers had to be subpoenaed, while the Mail & Guardian reported that all nine ultimately were. Both agree that Rand West City did not appear and submitted information only afterwards.
Enforcement is the weak point. Daily Maverick reported that the Supreme Court of Appeal has ruled the commission’s recommendations non-binding, and that the Constitutional Court dismissed its application for leave to appeal in April this year. The commission can still seek court orders, and Boshoff pointed to past wins against municipalities, but he acknowledged that litigation is slow and costly. “We cannot continue to sit in boardrooms,” he told municipal managers, according to Daily Maverick.
The politics have already begun. Boshoff said Gauteng Premier Panyaza Lesufi had accepted the report without reservation and pledged to support implementation, the Mail & Guardian reported. The DA’s water spokesperson, Stephen Moore, said the findings confirmed what residents experience, and claimed the three metros lose about one billion litres of treated water a day, according to The Star.
The new councils will inherit all of this. The National reported on 5 November, while results were still being verified, that the winners in the metros face vacancies, decaying infrastructure and unpaid debts to water boards. The commission has now given them a costed list of what is broken. The test will be whether, a year from now, the tanker bill has fallen because the pipes were fixed.
References
Mail & Guardian: SAHRC warns Gauteng water crisis is about failing infrastructure, not a lack of water (2 November 2026): https://mg.co.za/the-green-guardian/2026-11-02-sahrc-warns-gauteng-water-crisis-is-about-failing-infrastructure-not-a-lack-of-water/
Daily Maverick: No water, no life, but who will force Gauteng’s municipalities to act? (3 November 2026): https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2026-11-03-no-water-no-life-but-who-will-force-gautengs-municipalities-to-act/
The National: Joburg and Tshwane under fire as SAHRC report exposes Gauteng’s deepening water crisis (2 November 2026): https://thenational.co.za/news/2026-11-02-joburg-and-tshwane-under-fire-as-sahrc-report-exposes-gauteng-s-deepening-water-crisis/
Sowetan: Municipalities must stop spending money on water tankering, says SAHRC (2 November 2026): https://www.sowetan.co.za/news/2026-11-02-municipalities-must-stop-spending-money-on-water-tankering-says-sahrc/
Jacaranda FM: SAHRC accuses Gauteng municipalities of turning water tankering into a lucrative business (2 November 2026): https://www.jacarandafm.com/news/news/gauteng-municipalities-water-tankering-business/
Jacaranda FM: SAHRC finds systemic failures drive Gauteng water crisis (2 November 2026): https://www.jacarandafm.com/news/news/sahrc-find-systemic-failure-drive-gauteng-water-crisis/
The Star: SAHRC exposes Gauteng’s water failures as residents endure prolonged outages (3 November 2026): https://thestar.co.za/city-watch/2026-11-03-sahrc-exposes-gautengs-water-failures-as-residents-endure-prolonged-outages/
Joburg ETC: SAHRC Highlights R777 Million Spent on Water Tankers During Gauteng Water Crisis (3 November 2026): https://www.joburgetc.com/news/sahrc-r777-million-water-tanker-bill-gauteng-crisis/
AllAfrica (Daily Maverick opinion): Water That Harms the People Is Not a Right Fulfilled, It’s a Threat (2 November 2026): https://allafrica.com/stories/202611040006.html
The National: South Africa’s broken metros will leave election winners with a mountain to fix (5 November 2026): https://thenational.co.za/news/2026-11-05-south-africa-s-broken-metros-will-leave-election-winners-with-a-mountain-to-fix/