Johannesburg is losing an estimated 655 million litres of water every day through burst pipes—more than a third of its entire supply—as decades of deferred maintenance leave residents across the city without reliable access to tap water.
The scale of the loss is matched by the frequency of failure. Johannesburg Water recorded 16 pipe bursts within six days. Zakhele Khuzwayo, a senior manager at Johannesburg Water, attributed the failures to ageing infrastructure, pressure fluctuations, increased demand and environmental factors. Much of the network, Khuzwayo said, is more than 50 years old.
For residents of Hillbrow, one of the city's most densely populated inner-city neighbourhoods, the collapse is not a new emergency—it is a years-long condition. Thandani Masangu, a 17-year-old student, spent three hours on a recent day wheeling empty containers on a trolley through Hillbrow searching for water. His block has had no supply for more than three years. "I feel really broken," Masangu said. He and his friend Raymond Maleka eventually spotted a tank being refilled by a municipal water truck, but a security guard told them there was only enough water for residents of the adjacent tower block.
The situation in Johannesburg is part of a wider national failure. Access to piped water across South Africa rose from 73.4 percent in 2011 to 82.4 percent in 2022, a figure the South African Human Rights Commission and other oversight bodies say masks a deepening crisis of reliability. Having a pipe in a yard does not mean water flows from it.
Limpopo province has the lowest water access rate in the country at 69 percent, leaving more than 2.1 million residents without basic access. In the Greater Giyani Local Municipality, villages along the 20-kilometre D3810 dirt road—including Mahlathi, Ndindani and Gawula—have seen little change in conditions observed as far back as the lead-up to the 2024 local government elections. Residents in those villages were found congregating at burst pipes and communal taps, filling 20-litre containers by hand.
In Feb. 2025, residents of Mahlathi still had no water running from yard taps. Themba, a taxi driver from the village, described promises from authorities that had not translated into repairs. "They have made many promises, but they have not fixed anything. When there is water on one side of the village, there is no water on the other side. Sometimes we can go almost a month with no tap water," he said.
Tinswalo Tshabalala, also of Mahlathi, had water she had collected a week before the February visit, but it carried a rusty red hue and a foul smell she suspected indicated contamination. "I use the water because I have no other choice. I used it to bathe and wash dishes because we don't have any water," she said. The immediate problem at her tap was later resolved, but Tshabalala said she expected another failure.
In North West province, a 2025 investigative report by the South African Human Rights Commission found systemic water service failures across all four of the province's districts. Communities in each district reported prolonged water shortages and unreliable or unsafe supply. The latest census data for North West found that while nearly 90 percent of the province's population had access to water infrastructure—in yards or communally—about 65.8 percent of them regularly experienced interruptions.
Hammanskraal, located within the City of Tshwane municipality in Gauteng, has faced a 20-year shortage of clean drinking water and an overreliance on water tankers to meet daily needs. The broader Gauteng region, which includes Johannesburg, records roughly 144 burst pipes per day.
The failures carry a constitutional dimension. Access to clean and reliable water is an enshrined right under South Africa's constitution, and the gap between that guarantee and daily lived reality in Mahlathi, Hillbrow and Hammanskraal has drawn sustained criticism from human rights organisations. The South African Human Rights Commission's North West report described the failures as widespread and systemic rather than isolated incidents.
Wealthy residents in Johannesburg have responded by moving off the municipal grid, installing private storage tanks and boreholes. That exit accelerates a fiscal problem for the municipality: a shrinking base of paying customers reduces revenue available to maintain and replace infrastructure, while the burden of failure falls on lower-income households with no private alternative.
The African Ministers' Council on Water and the African Union Commission have placed urban water security at the centre of Africa's Agenda 2063 development framework, and Johannesburg's condition has been cited in regional policy discussions as a reference point for what institutional neglect produces. None of those frameworks has yet produced a repair schedule for the 50-year-old mains running beneath Hillbrow.
