Excuses from politicians don’t hold water

Neither Joburg Water (JW), nor bulk supplier Rand Water (RW) should blame paying customers for the latest spate of outages which left thousands of northern suburb households dry for the past week.

Despite graphs and figures trotted out, no evidence has been produced to prove that paying customers are culprits. Joburg Water has much to answer for.

First, it allows itself generous turnaround times to fix leaks and bursts. For example, 48 hours for a burst. Even these deadlines are often breached.

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While urging customers to use water sparingly, the utility shows no inclination to limit wastage. Driving around Joburg, you’ll see long-running leaks in every suburb, unattended by Joburg Water, despite being repeatedly reported and escalated.

“Do as I say, not as I do,” is not a persuasive approach. We expect those who tell us to save water, to practise what they preach.

In my ward, clean water has been running down Kent Road, Dunkeld, for more than a decade. Millions of litres down the drain.

After lengthy inquiries, we discovered the cause: “structural problems” with the Dunkeld reservoir. Budget was allocated for repairs.

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But budgets are easily moved around, “rebased” and manoeuvred. And water keeps wasting away. Variations of this story abound. In addition to the lack of urgency in attending leaks, there’s also “free” water.

There are communities where car washing is a preferred business model because there is no charge for water. Sometimes this may be the free basic water to which folks are entitled, sometimes not.

What National Treasury and Joburg Water call “nonrevenue water” does not include Wednesday 12 13 December 2023 free basic water, which is covered by national government grants.

At a weekend online meeting with councillors, JW could not clarify how much “consumption” was attributable to paying consumers.

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Yet paying consumers are being asked to change their behaviour. My main point at the meeting was that communication was poor.

They still don’t understand what customers need to know, and when. It’s not a customer-focused organisation.

Some managers are more concerned about not upsetting their communications colleagues than keeping customers informed.

Of the water which JW buys from RW, 24% is attributed to “physical losses”, while another 22% is nonrevenue water.

If JW tightened up, and set a better example of conserving water, we wouldn’t lurch from crisis to crisis. Rand Water is not blameless.

There have been too many malfunctions at its pumping stations, interrupting supply to Joburg, precipitating outages.

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Networks of reservoirs do not like to be disrupted. Pipes don’t respond well to the expansion, contraction and general disturbance of full pressure, then no pressure, then airlocks etc.

Further leaks and bursts are guaranteed, as are slow repair times. Rand Water has not made sufficient provision for electricity outages, courtesy of Eskom.

Here we get closer to the main cause of our water woes. It’s not the occasional heat wave or naughty, paying customers.

It’s not climate change. It’s unreliable Eskom. The unreliability of two dysfunctional stateowned entities – Eskom and Rand Water, run by deployed ANC cadres – is wreaking havoc with our water supply.

Our water woes won’t go away until we fix the politics. Vote out the ANC.