Against the backdrop of an ongoing period of widespread blackouts of electricity supply across South Africa, millions of people have now been affected by the unprecedented collapse of Johannesburg’s water system.
Both wealthy and poor residents have never experienced a shortage of this severity. Although hot weather has contributed to reservoir shrinkage, failing infrastructure resulting from decades of neglect is largely to blame.
The discontent among the populace poses a threat to the ruling African National Congress, which is facing its most significant electoral challenge to date since apartheid ended in the 1990s.
The country is now adopting a term called “watershedding”, the practice of going without water.
The shortage of water in the country has led to thousands of South Africans lining up for water in the country’s largest city. Every day, they wait in line with others for the arrival of tanker trucks delivering water. A resident of Soweto had to request water from a nearby restaurant before the trucks finally came.
In a nation where over 32% of the workforce is unemployed, a five-liter (1.3-gallon) bottle of water costs 25 rand ($1.30), making it a pricey purchase for the majority of people.
Water shortages are nothing new to the people of Johannesburg and the surrounding areas, but it usually doesn’t happen across the whole region at once.
Over the weekend, water management officials in Gauteng province, which includes Johannesburg and the capital Pretoria, warned officials in both cities that if water consumption wasn’t reduced, the water system may completely collapse. In other words, reservoirs would need to be closed for replenishment if their capacity fell below 10%.
That may mean weeks without running water, at a time when the hot weather is keeping demand for water high.
No drought has been officially declared, but officials are urging locals to save any water they can find.
Outraged activists and residents blame officials’ poor management and the failure to maintain aging water infrastructure for the crisis.
Residents in one neighborhood, Blairgowrie, staged a protest after going without water for nearly two weeks.
A local councilor in Soweto said he did not believe the water problem would be rectified soon. Water outages have become so frequent that he advises locals to reserve any supply they can find, especially because officials provide little or no warning of impending shortages.
The water tankers are not enough to keep residents supplied, he added.
South Africa’s notoriously unstable electricity system has contributed to the water crisis to an extent.
Johannesburg Mayor Kabelo Gwamanda announced on Tuesday that a power station that feeds energy to one of the city’s key water pumping facilities was struck by lightning, forcing it to collapse.
Melissa Enoch with agency reports
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