Water losses, mainly due to leaking or broken pipes and infrastructure, are alarmingly high in major cities in South Africa. Durban is the city with the highest water loss rate at 58%. The government's recent water balance sheet reveals that non-revenue water losses at a national level are 47.4%, with pipe leaks accounting for 40.8%. Despite a decade-long 'war on leaks' campaign, the volume of water loss continues to increase. Approximately half of the country's purified water supply is now lost due to leaks, theft, or non-payment. Durban, Johannesburg, and Gqeberha are among the cities with the highest non-revenue water rates.
Water losses, mostly caused by leaking or broken pipes and infrastructure, are untenably high in major cities. The biggest loser is Durban at 58%. At a national level, the government’s most recent water balance sheet puts non-revenue water losses at 47.4%, with pipe leaks calculated at 40.8%.
At a national level, the government’s most recent water balance sheet puts non-revenue water losses at 47.4%, with pipe leaks calculated at 40.8%. Though non-revenue water is a term that can include metering errors, water that is stolen or not paid for, the major component of non-revenue water is from physical leaks from broken or damaged pipes and infrastructure. The monthly 6,000-litre free basic water allowance per household is a constitutional right and is therefore zero-rated and excluded from non-revenue calculations.
On a sobering note, Water Research Commission senior manager Jay Bhagwan points out that Gauteng, South Africa’s economic heartland, has almost no local water resources of its own, and it is increasingly reliant on massive water transfers from the Thukela River in KwaZulu-Natal or the giant Lesotho Highlands Water Project.
This table shows the percentage of tap water being lost in large cities across the country. RW is revenue water, which is the amount of water purchased by cities, and NRW is non-revenue water, which is what is being lost in various ways. Late last year, the department issued a directive to KwaZulu-Natal’s biggest water utility, uMngeni-uThukela Water, to curb its water abstraction from the uMngeni River system by 8.5%.
The official noted that the municipality buys about 1,100 million litres a day from uMngeni-uThukela Water. Based on the purchase price of just more than R10 a kilolitre, the 46% losses from leaks translate to about R155-million a month, or about R1.8-billion a year in direct, wasted costs. What remains unclear, however, is what strategies municipalities in Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal will use to respond to the looming water restrictions. In a presentation to municipal engineers in 2016, senior South African water engineer Ronnie McKenzie cautioned against simply cutting off water supplies at certain times of the day to reduce consumption.
This strategy also creates an added danger to public health because sewage bacteria in the soil can enter cracked tap water pipes when they are depressurised. In a report in December, the Department of Water and Sanitation noted that, on average, KwaZulu-Natal residents only received water for 5.54 days a week in 2023. Customers in the Ugu District Municipality only received water for 4.13 days a week.
“Yet during the ‘Day Zero’ crisis, Cape Town managed to reduce its water consumption by 50% without resorting to intermittent water supply cutoffs. That just shows what can be achieved when a city has its back against the wall.” One should also remember that Zuma promised jobs! And the training of young people to be plumbers! Unbelievable! Well in fact not – the issue, Ramaphosa and kie, is that one needs to maintain working systems to keep them working. One can skip it for a year maybe two and you can keep on pushing until the taps run dry!
The solution is political will in the councils, who pass the budgets, to take it seriously and understand that clean water is life.The same losses apply to electricity. Treasury has set guidelines for acceptable losses which are in the region of 10 to 15%. The reported losses have increased by 3-5% every year due to mismanagement. As with Eskom, cadre deployment has removed the skills and the commitment.
Further, recognizing that the Municipality charges per sewer connection it has the information to calculate an average household use. Household use of a couple of liters a day should set of alarm bells and an investigation ensue. The under invoicing appeared to have been going of for at least 20 years.
There’d been a major leak early in November with a river running down the road for a day or two and dry taps for only two days .
Water Losses Leaking Pipes Broken Infrastructure Durban South Africa Non-Revenue Water Pipe Leaks Purified Water Supply Theft Non-Payment Johannesburg Gqeberha
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