<\/p>\n
\u201cAmanzi, awethu! Amanzi, awethu!\u201d (Water is ours!). These were chants of protesters across Johannesburg last week, protesting against recurring water outages, a lack of communication and planned water throttling.<\/p>\n
From\u00a0Brixton\u00a0to Kensington, Melville to Parktown, Ormonde to Midrand, residents took to the streets a week before the local government elections to vent their frustration over years of ongoing problems with Johannesburg\u2019s water supply.<\/p>\n
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\u201cI cannot remember the last time I had consecutive days of running water,\u201d said Brixton resident Rashida Mather, who joined two protests this week.<\/p>\n
Mather, a dementia care specialist, said she has to haul heavy buckets of water up and down her street to care for a patient. She has recently had three strokes, so cannot carry more than 10 litres of water at a time.<\/p>\n
It is a daily \u201cnightmare\u201d to get enough water for bed laundry and keep up basic hygiene, she said.<\/p>\n
Rashida Mather from Brixton, participating in a water protest in Melville on Wednesday. Mather looks after elderly people with dementia and says that the lack of reliable water supply has become unbearable. Image: Ihsaan Haffejee\/GroundUp<\/p>\n
In Parktown, we met 93-year-old Gilly Pirrow, a Johannesburg resident since 1955.<\/p>\n
She was among several dozen people protesting on Jan Smuts Avenue about prolonged water outages. The current outage started in early August.<\/p>\n
Pirrow is physically unable to carry water from tankers during these outages.<\/p>\n
Long-time Parktown resident Gilly Pirrow, who is now 93, joined a water protest on Friday morning. Image: Ihsaan Haffejee\/GroundUp<\/p>\n
In Kensington, protesters gathered on busy Queen Street, objecting to water throttling. The area has been without water for over a week, a regular occurrence in the past few years.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur kids are studying for exams without water. They cannot bathe,\u201d said Nonie Zulu, who had joined the protest.<\/p>\n
Residents supplied by the high-lying Commando System, including Melville, Brixton and Mayfair, blocked Melville\u2019s Main Road during a water protest on Wednesday. Image: Ihsaan Haffejee\/GroundUp<\/p>\n
This past week, Johannesburg Water (JW) and Rand Water (RW), the entity\u2019s bulk water supplier, have issued warnings about water shortages.<\/p>\n
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On Thursday, JW said water supply systems are \u201cseverely constrained\u201d, with high household, commercial and municipal demand stopping reservoirs and towers from recovering.<\/p>\n
This is resulting in low water pressure, intermittent supply and prolonged outages in various areas.<\/p>\n
It said it is implementing targeted throttling to balance available supply, support reservoir recovery and stabilise distribution across affected systems.<\/p>\n
\u201cCustomers may experience reduced pressure or temporary supply interruptions while these measures are underway,\u201d said JW.<\/p>\n
The systems affected include:<\/p>\n
Commando: Crosby, Brixton and Hursthill supply areas.
\nCentral: Parktown, Berea, Yeoville, Randjieslaagte, Linksfield and Alexander Park systems.
\nSandton: Bryanston, Illovo and Morningside.
\nMidrand: Grand Central, President Park and Erand systems.
\nRandburg-Roodepoort: Honeydew, Cosmo City and Waterval Tower.
\nSoweto and southern areas: Power Park, Chiawelo, Meadowlands, Zondi, Crown Gardens and Eagles Nest.
\nDeep South: Lawley, Ennerdale, Lenasia and Orange Farm systems.<\/p>\n
To reduce consumption, JW has said proposed restrictions include banning irrigation of public parks and gardens, requiring hosepipe spray nozzles, and prohibiting the hosing down of hard surfaces and dampening of building sand.<\/p>\n
JW said that the throttling is targeted towards \u201chigh-consumption areas\u201d, while delivering basic water access.<\/p>\n
If demand continued to rise, it would consider Level 2 restrictions.<\/p>\n
Level 1 restrictions are currently in place.<\/p>\n
It added that it was continuing leak detection, burst-pipe repairs, pressure management and infrastructure rehabilitation to reduce water losses.<\/p>\n
This follows a notice on 23 October, when RW warned that Johannesburg had exceeded its temporary water-use target every month from January to September 2026. RW said it is already pumping at full capacity and will hold municipalities that keep overconsuming to their limits.<\/p>\n
The target for Johannesburg is 1 528 megalitres (ML) per day, but consumption peaked at 1 765ML\/day in January and was still above the limit at 1 724ML\/day in September.<\/p>\n
After repeated calls to reduce consumption failed, RW said it will begin restricting bulk water supplies to municipalities exceeding their allocations. It warned that this could result in low pressure and intermittent outages.<\/p>\n
Westdene resident Zsofia Borsanyi said that she has now been without water for weeks and when the water does return the supply is erratic and unreliable. Image: Ihsaan Haffejee\/GroundUp<\/p>\n
Uphill battle<\/p>\n
Supplying water in Johannesburg is geographically difficult.<\/p>\n
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Water expert Richard Holden said Johannesburg\u2019s position makes supplying water to higher-lying areas particularly challenging. Water must be pumped through several stages at high pressure, from the Vaal system by RW and then to JW-operated reservoirs and towers.<\/p>\n
This makes the system vulnerable to power failures, pump breakdowns and leaking reservoirs. If storage facilities cannot fill properly or are bypassed, they cannot meet peak household demand, causing pressure to drop and elevated areas to lose supply.<\/p>\n
Ingrid Bester, a Kensington resident and member of the Johannesburg Water Crisis Committee, said some reservoirs are currently bypassed because they are cracked and leaking.<\/p>\n
Bester said the new Brixton reservoir and water tower have not resolved shortages.<\/p>\n
She sa`id \u201cthere are very qualified people\u201d working at JW, but the entity lacks operational funds because the City of Johannesburg historically starved JW of funds.<\/p>\n
The city began returning 70% of water revenue to JW in July, but massive funding is required to address accumulated backlogs.<\/p>\n
Demonstrators in Melville make their voices heard as they block Main Road to traffic during an early morning protest. Image: Ihsaan Haffejee\/GroundUp<\/p>\n
The city is also undercollecting, due to leaks and problems with the billing system.<\/p>\n
In the 2025 financial year, Johannesburg\u00a0reported\u00a0to the Auditor-General (AG) that it had lost more than 207 billion litres of water. This amounted to about R2.8 billion of lost\u00a0revenue.<\/p>\n
Over the past four years, R10.3 billion has been lost, which could have gone towards fixing and upgrading the network.<\/p>\n
Actual losses could be even higher, because the AG noted \u201cunreliable system-generated information\u201d at JW.<\/p>\n
It noted that the metro spent just 0.3% of its asset value on repairs and maintenance, far below National Treasury\u2019s recommended minimum of 8%.<\/p>\n
Dr Ferrial Adam, executive director of WaterCAN, criticised the authorities for \u201cnot progressing fast enough\u201d and for blaming high consumer demand while largely \u201cignoring\u201d widespread leaks.<\/p>\n
Bester echoed this, stressing the necessity of extensive, citywide pipe replacements rather than temporary fixes.<\/p>\n
Holden described the\u00a0current crisis\u00a0as a \u201cperfect storm\u201d, with leaking pipes and reservoirs and \u201cpeople not paying for water so they don\u2019t care about their consumption, and people who are paying for water who don\u2019t fix leaks on their property and fill their pools\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cEach bit adds up,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
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Holden said that in order to safeguard water security, citywide physical restrictions and mandatory water-demand management devices, as introduced during Cape Town\u2019s Day Zero crisis, are needed in Johannesburg.<\/p>\n
Ravin Singh, a leader in the Johannesburg Water Crisis Committee, addresses protesters at a demonstration for water in Kensington on Thursday. Image: Ihsaan Haffejee\/GroundUp<\/p>\n
Ravin Singh, convenor of the Johannesburg Water Crisis Committee, welcomed JW\u2019s proposed measures to stabilise supply. However, he said questions remained about when water would be restored to households without water.<\/p>\n
He said that \u201crestrictions must be applied fairly\u201d, adding that communities already without water should not bear the same burden as areas with uninterrupted supply.<\/p>\n
\u201cThose in the north water their gardens, fill their pools and wash down cement with hosepipes while those in the east [and other areas] do not get a drop. This must change,\u201d said Singh.<\/p>\n
Protesters gathered at the corner of Queen and Albertina Sisulu streets in Kensington on Thursday to voice their frustration at the lack of water supply in their neighbourhoods. Image: Ihsaan Haffejee\/GroundUp<\/p>\n
Charmaine Partridge brought all the plastic bottles she uses to collect and store water at her home in Kensington to the protest. She said problems with water have been ongoing for more than four years in her area. Image: Ihsaan Haffejee\/GroundUp<\/p>\n
In Parktown on Friday, a resident protests for water as a man begs for change at a traffic light while police monitor the demonstration. Image: Ihsaan Haffejee\/GroundUp<\/p>\n
A woman wears a water bucket as a hat as residents from Parktown stage a demonstration for water on Friday morning. Image: Ihsaan Haffejee\/GroundUp<\/p>\n
Residents of Parktown protested on Jan Smuts Avenue as water supply in their area remains unreliable.\u00a0Image: Ihsaan Haffejee\/GroundUp<\/p>\n
Many residents have been without a reliable water supply for weeks in the Parktown area. Image: Ihsaan Haffejee\/GroundUp<\/p>\n
\u00a9 2026 GroundUp. This article was first published\u00a0here.<\/p>\n
#Joburg #residents #protest #water #supply #throttled<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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