Anja du Plessis | Joburg's water crisis: How mismanagement, poor water governance led to this point
The rapid escalation and exacerbation of the country's water woes can be attributed to dysfunctional and inept municipalities, the lack of necessary skilled personnel as well as the lack of financial resources and non-investment in dilapidated water infrastructure, writesThe continuing plague of no water supply over large parts of the City of Johannesburg, which expanded to other municipalities, such as Mogale City, despite City Power, Johannesburg Water and Rand Water saying all is well,...
Before we can determine how we got to this water supply predicament in Johannesburg, we need to briefly reflect on the country's water availability and supply to show that the City of Johannesburg is not an isolated case, with numerous towns and villages sitting with dry taps for weeks on end. South Africa is a semi-arid to arid country, which is considered to be water stressed by the different water crises across the country, ranked the second-highest risk after the unemployment crisis.
Dry taps are a regular occurrence for citizens living in rural areas and villages, such as Bushbuckridge and Welverdiend and small towns such as Jacobsdal . Additionally, no access to safe and reliable water supply or basic sanitation services is also a pending crisis, with more than 26% of schools and 45% of hospitals and clinics having no access to water at all.
The continued water supply crisis is, therefore, driven by a multitude of factors, not only affecting metropolitan residents but also towns and villages across the country. No or non-functioning water access and sanitation facilities as well as intermittent or complete lack of water supply due to the continued dysfunctional and inept state of local municipalities, ongoing lack of service delivery, poor and uninformed water governance as well as the continued lack of political will of government to resolve these widely researched and reported problems are the primary factors of concern.
Some measures residents can implement, can include using water from swimming pools to flush toilets, installing boreholes as an alternative water source, installing JoJo tanks to store water or collect rainwater, and purchasing water to drink and use for food preparation. There is, however, no quick fix for water supply, unlike the case of trying to deal with continued blackouts.
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