South Africa’s water crisis is no longer just about dry taps, but what happens when emergency measures become a permanent business model. As municipalities spend hundreds of millions on water tankers, people remain trapped without reliable infrastructure. The question is no longer whether tankers are necessary, but who benefits when the emergency never ends and how long South Africans can afford to pay for failure.
There is something deeply wrong with a country in which turning on a tap has become an act of uncertainty, while the business of transporting water has become increasingly lucrative.
The recent public hearings on the Water Services Amendment Bill have crystallised a crisis that has been hiding in plain sight: South Africa’s constitutional promise of access to water and sanitation is being undermined by failing infrastructure, weak municipal governance and an ever-growing dependence on water tankers.
Water tankering is supposed to be an emergency intervention. In South Africa, however, the emergency is becoming the system. And that should worry all of us.
Thomas Sankara is famously associated with the warning that political leaders must choose between “champagne for a few” or safe drinking water for all. That warning has acquired an uncomfortable relevance in South Africa. The question we should be asking is whether we are building a system in which reliable water becomes a privilege while public money continues to flow into temporary solutions.
There is nothing inherently wrong with using water tankers. When a community is suddenly cut off from its water supply, a tanker can be a lifeline. The government has a moral obligation to ensure that people are not left without water while infrastructure is being repaired. The problem is when the tanker stops being the ambulance and becomes the hospital.
When communities receive water from tankers month after month, and sometimes year after year, we are no longer dealing with an emergency. We are witnessing the failure of the state to provide a basic service.
The financial implications are equally troubling. Although there has not yet been a comprehensive national quantification of spending on water tankering, available municipal figures provide a disturbing glimpse into its scale. The City of Johannesburg has spent about R650-million on water tankering over the past five financial years. Tshwane spent R621-million in the 2024/25 financial year, following expenditure of R322.95-million in 2023/24.
These are not insignificant amounts. The obvious question is: what could have been achieved if some of these resources had been directed towards fixing the infrastructure that makes water tankering necessary in the first place? Every burst pipe that is not repaired, every failing pump that is not replaced and every reservoir that is allowed to deteriorate creates another opportunity for an emergency intervention. And every emergency intervention creates another expenditure line.
This is where the water-tankering crisis becomes more than a question of service delivery. It becomes a question of governance and accountability.
A system that repeatedly pays contractors to transport water must be subjected to extraordinary scrutiny. Who receives these contracts? How are prices determined? How frequently are contracts renewed? What mechanisms are in place to prevent conflicts of interest? Is the water actually delivered where it is supposed to go? What is the quality of that water? And, crucially, how much of the expenditure is genuinely necessary?
These are not accusations of wrongdoing against every contractor or municipal official. They are basic questions that must be answered when large amounts of public money are spent on an emergency that appears to have no end.
There are also troubling reports and allegations in some communities about water quality and about operators charging residents for water while municipalities are also paying for its delivery. Where such allegations arise, they should not be dismissed or politicised. They should be investigated.
The poor cannot be expected to accept second-class water services simply because they are poor. Nor should water tankers become a mechanism through which municipalities avoid the much harder work of repairing and maintaining infrastructure. This is perhaps the greatest danger of the tanker economy: it can make failure financially sustainable.
A municipality that has failed to maintain its water network can continue responding to the consequences through emergency procurement. The immediate political pressure is relieved because a tanker arrives. But the underlying pipe remains broken. The pump remains dysfunctional. The treatment plant remains undermaintained. The crisis is postponed rather than solved.
South Africa’s National Water Action Plan recognises the scale of this challenge. Released in July, the plan promises short-, medium- and long-term interventions, including infrastructure investment, stronger municipal accountability, regulatory reform and measures to address corruption and criminality in the water sector. That is welcome.
But South Africa does not suffer from a shortage of plans. We suffer from a shortage of implementation.
The history of government programmes should make us cautious. The War on Leaks programme, for example, was presented as an important intervention to address water losses while creating opportunities for young people. Yet its implementation raised serious questions about expenditure, management and accountability. The lesson should be obvious: another plan will not turn the taps back on unless there are consequences for those who fail to implement it.
The National Water Action Plan therefore needs more than targets and timelines. It needs measurable accountability. Municipalities must be required to explain why they are repeatedly spending money on tankering and what they are doing to eliminate the underlying causes. Contracts must be transparent. Procurement processes must be open to scrutiny.
Water quality must be independently monitored. Communities must know how much is being spent on tankering in their areas and who is receiving the contracts.
Most importantly, there must be a clear exit strategy.
A tanker should arrive because something has gone wrong, not because the government has decided that tankers are an acceptable replacement for infrastructure.
The consequences of doing nothing are already visible. Johannesburg, for example, is losing enormous volumes of water through ageing infrastructure and burst pipes, while some communities have endured prolonged periods without reliable supply. Wealthier residents are increasingly responding by drilling boreholes and installing private systems, while poorer households remain dependent on municipal infrastructure and emergency tankers.
This creates a dangerous two-tier water system. Those with money buy their way out of the crisis. Those without money wait for the tanker. That cannot be the South Africa envisaged by our Constitution.
Water is not a luxury. It is not a political favour. It is not a commodity that should be reliably available only to those who can afford private alternatives. We should therefore stop treating water tankering as a success simply because a tanker arrives. The real measure of success is whether the tanker eventually becomes unnecessary.
South Africa has a choice to make. We can continue pouring public money into an expanding emergency system while allowing the infrastructure beneath our feet to collapse. Or we can invest in pipes, pumps, treatment plants, skilled municipal personnel, maintenance and accountable institutions that can deliver reliable water for generations. We can choose a system that creates wealth for a few contractors whenever communities go without water. Or we can choose safe, reliable and dignified water for all.
More champagne for a few, or water for all? In a constitutional democracy, there should be only one answer. DM
