JOHANNESBURG – The Democratic Alliance will take the City of Johannesburg to court over the ongoing water crisis, which the party says is threatening 4 000 jobs in Selby alone and has left communities without water for weeks.
DA mayoral candidate for Johannesburg Helen Zille said this week that whilst millions of litres of clean drinking water continue to flood the streets of Johannesburg, people are losing their jobs as a result of bad governance from the ANC/EFF/PA coalition government.
“Millions of litres of water have been gushing out of a pipe for a week,” Zille said during a visit to Linbro Park, where a burst water pipe has been left running. “It’s fresh, clean drinking water running down the street and creating a lake whilst Rand Water is throttling Joburg Water to make sure residents use less water when they don’t even have running water in their pipes.”
The DA held a press conference on Wednesday at its headquarters in Bruma, Johannesburg. The party stated that it has instructed its legal team to pursue the matter on an urgent basis.
Mayor denies disaster stage
In a separate briefing on Wednesday, Johannesburg Mayor Dada Morero said: “I do not think that we have reached national disaster stage.”
He said the city had deployed 60 water tankers to affected areas and progress was being made in addressing issues in Selby, Melville, Emmarentia and Brixton.
However, Zille disputed this assessment, stating that Johannesburg has 22 critically endangered water systems and four that are on the verge of total collapse.
“Those four are the places where we are seeing most of the current outages,” Zille said, adding that access to water is a constitutional right.
WATCH HERE: Water flows freely through Joburg streets, but not a drop to drink!
R200 billion maintenance backlog
Zille said Johannesburg’s crisis has been exacerbated by underspending on maintenance, causing a maintenance backlog stretching back to the early 2000s.
“We’ve done a calculation on the maintenance backlog in Johannesburg, and it is an estimated R200 billion, which is more than twice the entire budget of the City of Johannesburg,” she said.
The DA alleges that water tanker suppliers may be unduly benefiting from the crisis. The party said that the use of tankers has quadrupled in recent years and indicated that suppliers are allegedly benefiting from tenders by deliberately sabotaging water infrastructure. This has diverted money towards supplying tankers that could otherwise be spent on infrastructure.
Households blamed for leaks
Zille said households should not be blamed for over-consumption before the city fixes leaks in the system.
According to Joburg Water, the average resident uses double the international average of water per day. Zille disputed this claim.
“I don’t believe that for a minute,” she said. “Water leaks are the reason consumption is so high. We are losing millions of litres of water to waste due to leaks and bad infrastructure.”
FF Plus calls for intervention
The Freedom Front Plus has called for urgent integrated intervention to resolve Gauteng’s water crisis, stating that the problem is the result of systemic mismanagement, poor planning and inadequate infrastructure maintenance.
VF Plus member of the provincial legislature and Gauteng provincial leader Jaco Mulder said municipalities must realistically align their integrated development plans with actual capacity and future growth.
“The scale of water wastage in some municipalities is at worrying levels. This means that residents must endure water restrictions whilst millions of litres literally seep into the ground,” he said.
Mulder criticised Gauteng Premier Panyaza Lesufi’s remark that he himself was forced to shower at a hotel as extremely insensitive.
“This comment underscores exactly how far political leadership is currently removed from the daily suffering of people who don’t have such luxury options,” Mulder said.
Proposed solutions
The DA said the city has adopted a turnaround plan to address the issues but that it has not been implemented. The party wants the courts to force the city to act on it.
DA spokesperson for water and sanitation Stephen Moore said the Vaal Dam is currently at 101,6% capacity and that Rand Water should be allowed to pump more water when the dam is over capacity.
“We are going to call on the Department of Water and Sanitation to allow Rand Water to pump more water from the Vaal Dam, only when it is over 100% capacity. They could produce 280 megalitres of additional water,” Moore said.
Whilst the DA has called for emergency funding to be made available, it stated that it is not calling for the president to declare a state of disaster, as such periods have limited oversight, making them vulnerable to corruption.
