Three Gauteng departments and the City of Johannesburg are locked in a billing dispute that could paralyse 22 NGOs that care for children.
The Children’s Memorial Institute (CMI) campus is once again under threat of disconnection of services because of infighting between three provincial departments and the City of Johannesburg.
If this happens, it halts operations for 22 child-care NGOs, paralyses the Johannesburg School for Autism and threatens the central provincial laundry that supplies clean linen to Charlotte Maxeke Johannesburg Academic Hospital and 13 regional public clinics.
For the second time in less than five months – and despite binding high court interdicts – the City of Johannesburg has issued fresh pre-termination notices for water and electricity accounts. The municipal bill reflects disputed arrears in excess of R44-million (more than R41-million for electricity and R3-million for water), dating back years.
Yet, ground-level enforcement by City Power and Johannesburg Water treats the entire Parktown complex as a single defaulting debtor, bundling 22 vulnerable charities together with high-consumption provincial infrastructure.
The dispute has reached an administrative stalemate involving four separate organs of state: the City of Johannesburg, Gauteng Health, Gauteng Education and the Gauteng Department of Infrastructure Development (GDID).
This is how the situation has developed over a decade of interdepartmental dysfunction across a shared, heritage precinct:
The shared campus setup: The CMI heritage site in Parktown houses two entirely different operations under a single municipal bulk meter feed: 22 statutory child-welfare NGOs (including Childline, the Teddy Bear Foundation and the Johannesburg School for Autism) alongside a massive, industrial provincial laundry facility operated by the Gauteng Department of Health.
Disproportionate utility usage: Engineering readings reveal that the provincial laundry facility consumes more than 90% of the water and electricity across the entire CMI campus – using roughly 300 kilolitres of water a day compared with just 12 kilolitres for all 22 charities combined.
The 2013 master account agreement: Under a 2013 inter-departmental memorandum of understanding, the Gauteng Department of Health agreed to manage the master utility account for the entire property. However, as municipal bills mounted, the department began disputing the billing quantum, alleging severe overestimation by the City, and stopped settling the account – without establishing individual meters or creating a mechanism to bill tenants fairly.
What happened in the first cut-off: In late 2025, City Power executed a blanket electricity disconnection following unresolved water interdicts from July 2025. The campus was forced on to emergency diesel generators, draining millions from non-profit reserves until fuel funds were completely exhausted.
**Why the Gauteng Department of Infrastructure (GDID) and Education are entangled: **As the legal owner of the land, GDID is legally required to execute tenant leases and install independent zonal sub-meters – a directive mandated by the high court that GDID has delayed for more than a year. Meanwhile, the Gauteng Department of Education (GDE) oversees the special-needs educational bodies on site (like the Autism School), but has failed to pay its proportional operational and maintenance contributions to CMI for nearly two years, building up a R2-million backlog while expecting CMI to maintain the heritage buildings out of pocket.
Dr Dee Blackie, a child protection researcher and consultant who manages the historic Children’s Memorial Institute (CMI) campus on a pro bono basis, says the impacts of cut-offs would be huge:
**Infection control at risk:**The industrial laundry facility on site processes sterile linen essential for surgeries and acute ward sanitation across regional healthcare facilities.
**Paralysed infrastructure:**The Johannesburg School for Autism occupies 70% of the CMI campus. Utility disconnections turn off sensory therapy spaces, shut down specialised educational equipment and disable elevators servicing multi-storey facilities, leaving mobility-impaired children unable to reach classrooms.
**Unfunded operational overheads:**While the school operates on site, the Gauteng Department of Education has failed to settle its proportional operational contributions and maintenance fees to CMI, accumulating a deficit of more than R2-million while expecting the precinct to remain lit, secure, and maintained.
**Trauma services interrupted:**Organisations on site – including Childline Gauteng, the Teddy Bear Foundation, Lefika La Phodiso and Courage Child Protection – perform statutory social work on behalf of the state. Power cuts knock victim assessment units offline, render electronic child protection files inaccessible and cause perishable food reserves for early childhood feeding schemes to spoil.
“People think cutting the power here just turns off office lights, but this site houses the commercial laundry processing linen for Charlotte Maxeke and at least 13 regional health clinics. If City Power shuts down this campus, sterile linen flow halts, meaning surgeries get cancelled, infection control breaks down in acute wards, and regional healthcare collapses from a back-of-house utility dispute,” said Blackie.
During Covid-19, the NPOs and the Autism School were closed for lockdowns, but the hospital laundry ran 24/7 at maximum capacity.
“Yet the City treats us as equal co-defendants in a R44-million debt we didn’t generate.”
“The Johannesburg School for Autism caters to more than 1,000 highly sensitive, neurodiverse children. When the electricity goes, sensory therapy spaces go dark, specialised equipment fails and elevators stop working, leaving disabled children trapped on upper floors or unable to access classrooms entirely. You cannot run a complex special-needs educational institution on intermittent diesel generators.
“Organisations like Childline and the Teddy Bear Foundation perform statutory social work that the state is legally obligated to provide. When power and water are cut, victim assessment units go offline, electronic child protection case files become inaccessible and emergency feeding schemes lose thousands of rands in refrigerated perishable food.”
Blackie said tens of thousands of rands from emergency reserves were being spent just buying diesel to keep critical services alive during 16 Days of Activism in the 2025 cut-off, funds meant for traumatised, abused and abandoned children.
“We are being forced to choose between paying for emergency fuel or funding child rescue operations because state organs refuse to talk to each other,” she said.
Municipal law specialist Chantelle Gladwin-Wood, acting as legal counsel for CMI, argues that the City’s aggressive enforcement is not only heavy-handed, it is fundamentally unlawful.
According to Gladwin-Wood, the City is acting in direct contravention of Section 102(2) of the Municipal Systems Act, which explicitly prohibits municipal service disconnections when an account is subject to a formal, unresolved billing query or court-ordered debatement.
“The City of Johannesburg cannot legally execute credit control actions against a property while a legitimate billing dispute and account debatement are under way,” Gladwin-Wood emphasised.
“Furthermore, attempting to hold 22 independent child-welfare charities collectively liable for a multimillion-rand provincial debt, generated predominantly by a high-consumption state laundry, violates basic administrative justice.”
Gladwin-Wood pointed out that the municipal disconnections directly breached binding high court orders previously granted to protect the campus.
By targeting the facility, local and provincial authorities are jointly infringing on fundamental rights enshrined in the Constitution, specifically Section 28, which dictates that a child’s best interests are paramount in every matter.
In an official response issued on Friday, 21 August 2026, the GDID conceded that nonprofit organisations should not be saddled with provincial debts. It was the only provincial department to respond.
Spokesperson Theo Nkonki stated that the provincial government “does not intend to transfer its verified financial obligations to nonprofit organisations”.
GDID confirmed it was actively engaging with the City of Johannesburg and Gauteng Health to reconcile historical municipal accounts, establish a verified consumption baseline and implement court-mandated debatement processes to separate provincial liability from NPO usage.
However, the response highlights ongoing technical delays. Although a baseline water meter was installed in August 2025, GDID confirmed that an appointed service provider had yet to install the “zonal meters” required across the campus to isolate individual tenant consumption.
Crucially, GDID’s statement focuses primarily on water management, offering no concrete timeline or technical solution for separating the multimillion-rand bulk electricity feed.
Here’s the rundown of how the City and three provincial departments are at loggerheads.
City of Johannesburg (municipal utility enforcer): Demands immediate settlement of master account arrears exceeding R44-million. Utility providers continue issuing blanket pre-termination notices against the property rather than installing bulk sub-meters to isolate high-consumption provincial infrastructure from non-profit facilities.
Gauteng Department of Health (the defaulting account holder): Holds the master utility account under a 2013 inter-departmental memorandum of understanding. The department disputes the quantum of the municipal bill, citing inflated estimates, but has failed to settle the account or inform the high court and City of its position, leaving non-profits exposed to disconnection.
Gauteng Department of Education (the unpaid tenant): Responsible for special-needs public education facilities on site. It has accrued a R2-million funding backlog by failing to pay its monthly operational and property maintenance contributions to CMI for nearly two years.
Gauteng Department of Infrastructure Development (the absent landlord): As the registered state owner of the heritage precinct, GDID is responsible for lease administration and capital upgrades. While GDID has committed to audit leases and install zonal meters, it has taken more than a year to move from baseline water metering to physical infrastructure installation. DM
