Gauteng is once again being warned of a water crisis. The Minister of Water and Sanitation has distanced the department from the issues in Johannesburg, widely recognised as one of the most unequal cities, in one of the most unequal countries, in the world. But the citizens continue to struggle.
Recently, Department of Water and Sanitation DG Sean Phillips cautioned that Gauteng municipalities must introduce strong water restrictions and enforce them decisively to avert a looming shortage. His warning follows record-high water demand in the province, with Johannesburg alone consuming more than 1,700 megalitres of water per day. Gauteng’s per capita water use currently stands at 279 litres per person per day – almost double that of the Western Cape, and very high by international standards.
We have seen demonstrations by residents across Johannesburg, in particular in Midrand, Emmarentia, Melville and Parkhurst, who have not had water for more than 20 days. While it is alleged that city residents are consuming an excessive amount of water, alongside failing infrastructure, Johannesburg Water has been unable to provide a clear and concrete explanation for the underlying causes. The Deputy Minister of Water and Sanitation, David Mahlobo, said the new soft restrictions would apply to Johannesburg, Tshwane, Ekurhuleni, Mpumalanga and Free State.
On paper, the argument is straightforward. Demand is too high, infrastructure is failing, and decisive action is required. Measures for households — restrictions, punitive tariffs, throttling of supply, and disconnecting of illegal connections — are presented as necessary tools to stabilise the system.
But when these measures are applied in the most unequal urban context in the country, the question that must be asked is not only whether they reduce consumption, but, if they do, who pays the price.
A crisis layered on inequality
South Africa is confronting what has often been described as a “triple challenge”: poverty, unemployment, and inequality. The water crisis does not sit outside this reality – it compounds it.
Johannesburg’s inequality is spatial, racial, and infrastructural. The architecture of apartheid hydrology is in place. Race-based and unequal distribution of water resources in South Africa were designed to favour the white minority, while depriving black populations, particularly in rural areas and townships, of access to water. We continue to have wealthier suburbs enjoying stable supply, redundancy in infrastructure, and the financial means to absorb higher tariffs. Poorer areas, particularly rural areas, informal settlements and historically marginalised Black communities, still suffer. Parts of southwest Johannesburg, for example, experience dry taps, intermittent supply, and reliance on communal infrastructure.
In these areas, water tanks are often filled irregularly, if at all. They are frequently unsealed and poorly maintained, raising serious risks of contamination. When taps run dry, households improvise by storing water in unsafe containers, accessing water from unsafe sources such as rivers and streams, sharing limited supply across multiple families, or travelling long distances to access water.
Against this backdrop, uniform restriction regimes risk becoming regressive by design, even when they are not intended to be.
Restrictions that ignore lived reality
Municipal bylaws, such as those in Johannesburg, give councils sweeping powers during periods of scarcity. They allow for the restriction of water use, throttling of supply, emergency measures without prior notice, and enforcement through tariffs and cut-offs.
These legal instruments are not inherently unjust. In times of real shortage, the state has a responsibility to manage demand and protect the integrity of the system.
The problem arises when formal equality is mistaken for substantive fairness.
In practice, indigent households are often larger, multi-generational, and overcrowded. The free basic water allowance of 6,000 litres of potable water per household per month is intended to meet basic hygiene and consumption needs. This amount is designed to support approximately 25 litres per person per day, based on an average household size of eight people. But this does not align with lived conditions in informal and poorly serviced areas, where several families often share a household that easily exceeds eight people.
When consumption thresholds are exceeded, these households are charged punitive tariffs. Logically and materially, this makes little sense.
For an unemployed household sharing a small yard with several families, “high consumption” is not a lifestyle choice – it is a survival necessity. Yet restriction regimes treat them as equivalent to luxury consumption.
This is how policies that appear neutral on paper become punitive on the ground.
The class nature of water access
Water access in contemporary South Africa is increasingly mediated by income and assets. Those with financial means can adapt. They drill boreholes, purchase water tanks, install filtration systems, and buy bottled or trucked water when quality or supply fails. Those without resources cannot.
This dynamic is already visible in Johannesburg. While poorer communities endure dry taps and unreliable tankers, wealthier suburbs are able to “buy resilience”. The water crisis thus becomes a class filter: scarcity for the poor, inconvenience for the rich.
Punitive tariffs, throttling, and cut-offs reinforce this divide. For affluent households, higher tariffs are absorbed as a cost. For poor households, they translate into debt, disconnections, and deepening vulnerability.
Water governance, under these conditions, ceases to be about universal access and becomes a mechanism through which inequality is reproduced.
When quality fails alongside quantity
The crisis is not only about how much water is available, but whether that water is safe.
Just weeks ago, residents in parts of Johannesburg’s city centre were advised to avoid drinking tap water due to an unusual odour. Joburg Water initiated testing along Albertina Sisulu Road and the surrounding areas, acknowledging potential quality concerns.
The National Water Act (1998) is clear: everyone has the right to water that is both sufficient in quantity and safe in quality. Advising residents not to drink tap water, particularly in the heart of the city, represents a direct infringement of that right.
The alternatives offered in such situations reveal further inequalities. Boiling water requires electricity or gas. Disinfecting water requires purchasing chemicals like bleach and having appropriate storage containers. These are not trivial requirements for households already under financial strain.
Once again, the burden of adaptation falls unevenly.
Infrastructure failure disguised as demand management
It is important to state clearly: Gauteng’s water challenge is not only about consumption. It is also about infrastructure failure.
The Director-General himself has acknowledged that record demand is compounded by failing infrastructure. Leaks, pipe bursts, pump failures, and ageing networks continue to drain the system.
The President himself in his 2026 State of the Nation Address (SONA) acknowledged that the water crisis problem in the country lies less in the availability of water than in getting water to people’s taps. This distinction is crucial. It is not purely hydrological, but infrastructural and institutional.
Yet the emphasis of public messaging and enforcement often falls disproportionately on household behaviour.
This creates a moral narrative in which citizens are asked to sacrifice, while structural failures remain insufficiently addressed. It risks shifting responsibility away from long-term maintenance and governance failures onto those least able to shoulder it.
Demand management is necessary. But demand management without credible investment in maintenance, loss reduction, and institutional capacity is not a solution – it is a deferral.
Who ultimately suffers?
The uncomfortable truth is that restriction-heavy approaches, when applied in deeply unequal contexts, tend to hurt the poor first and hardest.
They threaten the constitutional right of access to water, not through overt denial, but through indirect exclusion: unreliable supply, unaffordable tariffs, unsafe quality, and punitive enforcement.
Meanwhile, those with means remain buffered.
This is why water governance cannot be treated as a purely technical exercise. It is fundamentally political and ethical. Decisions about restrictions, tariffs, and enforcement are decisions about whose lives are disrupted and whose are protected.
Rethinking water governance through justice
If South Africa is serious about avoiding a future of permanent water crises, governance must shift in three key ways:
- Demand management must be equity-sensitive. Restrictions and tariffs must distinguish between luxury consumption and survival use. Blanket measures will deepen injustice.
- Infrastructure maintenance and non-revenue water reduction must be prioritised with urgency and transparency. Households should not be punished for losses caused by failing systems.
- Water governance must be rebuilt around dignity and accountability. Access to safe water is not a behavioural reward; it is a constitutional right.
Without these shifts, restriction regimes risk becoming tools of exclusion rather than sustainability.
In the world’s most unequal city, in one of the world’s most unequal countries, a water policy that ignores inequality is not neutral. It is harmful. And if we fail to recognise that now, the next crisis will not only be about scarcity – it will be about justice denied.
Anthony Kaziboni is a Senior Researcher at the Centre for Social Development in Africa (CSDA), University of Johannesburg.
