Johannesburg's Water Crisis Angers Voters and Pushes Rich Residents Off the Grid

Every day, the city of Johannesburg, South Africa loses more than 655 million litres of water — about 173 million gallons — through cracked and broken pipes. For many residents, this means turning on a tap and getting nothing at all. The water crisis has become one of the biggest problems facing the city, and people are very angry. With local elections coming up later this year, voters say the lack of clean, running water shows that city leaders have failed them.

Seventeen-year-old student Thandani Masangu knows the struggle firsthand. He spent three hours pushing a trolley loaded with empty containers through the Hillbrow neighborhood, searching for water. His apartment building has had no running water for more than three years. When Masangu and his friend Raymond Maleka finally found a municipal water truck filling a tank, a security guard told them the water was only for people in a nearby building.

The main cause of the crisis is aging infrastructure — pipes, pumps, and systems that are very old and falling apart. Johannesburg Water, the city-run utility, admits this is a serious problem. 'The infrastructure is old. A lot of it is more than 50 years old,' said Zakhele Khuzwayo, a senior manager at the utility. He said the city knows where it wants to be, but getting there takes time and money.

Experts say that fixing pipes and doing regular maintenance is simply not exciting to politicians. 'Maintenance is not sexy. It's always more interesting to allocate funds to other areas,' said Craig Sheridan, a water researcher at a Johannesburg university. He also pointed out that broken public infrastructure is a problem all across South Africa. Scientists add that climate change is making things worse by causing more water to evaporate before it can be used.

Money problems are making everything harder to fix. In July, South Africa's national government held back funding from Johannesburg after the city failed to manage its finances properly. The city's budget of about 97 billion rand — roughly $6 billion — was described as 'unfunded,' meaning the city planned to spend more money than it actually has. The mayor's office did not respond to questions about the water problems or the budget.

The water crisis is also changing how people vote. In 2021, the ruling African National Congress, or ANC, received less than half of the vote for the first time since the end of apartheid — the country's old system of racial segregation. Many voters blamed poor services like water and electricity for this drop in support. Raymond Maleka, who will vote for the first time this year, said he will not be voting for the ANC.

Wealthier residents in the suburbs have found their own solutions, but those solutions come at a cost for everyone. Many have drilled boreholes, which are deep holes in the ground that reach underground water sources. One lawyer spent 100,000 rand — about $5,500 — to set up her own private water system after one bad shutdown. She admitted the problem no longer bothers her, but she felt awful for those who couldn't afford to do the same.

About 10,000 boreholes have been drilled in the greater Johannesburg area over the past decade. The problem with this trend is that when richer residents stop using the city's water system, they also stop paying into it. That leaves the city with even less money to fix the broken pipes that started the crisis. Without repairs, experts warn, the situation will only get worse for the people who have no other choice.