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South Africa’s drinking water systems are critical but stable, warns SANBWA
Whenever the Department of Water and Sanitation publishes its annual Drop Progress reports, the water sector anxiously awaits. This year's main conclusion — that the risk associated with drinking water has "stabilised" — was received with cautious relief by some. However, I am not one of those releasing a breath of relief.
Image credit: Bluewater Sweden on Unsplash
Stabilisation, in this context, means that the decade-long deterioration in South Africa's drinking water quality risk profile has paused.
It does not mean conditions have improved.
It does not mean the infrastructure is recovering.
And it certainly does not mean that South Africans who have lost confidence in their tap water should revise that assessment.
What it means is that we have stopped getting worse, for now, at a level that would be considered a crisis in any comparable country.
Stats behind the caution
Let me put some numbers to that.
At least 18% of drinking water systems remain at high or critical risk.
The Northern Cape, one of South Africa's most water-stressed provinces, has only 24% of its systems classified as low-risk.
Nearly half of all treated potable water produced by municipalities is lost before it reaches consumers, with the national non-revenue water rate at 47.3%, unchanged from 47.4% two years ago.
The City of Johannesburg loses almost half its water. The eThekwini Municipality loses more than half.
Nationally, over 1.4 trillion litres are lost to physical leaks alone every year. These are not the metrics of a system that is coping.
What makes this more troubling still is what the Green Drop report (focused on wastewater treatment) reveals.
Nearly half of all municipal wastewater systems (47%) are now in a critical state, up from 39% in 2022.
Green Drop certifications have effectively halved.
Inadequately treated sewage is finding its way into the rivers and catchments from which our drinking water is drawn.
These two crises are connected.
A failing wastewater system upstream is a threat to a drinking water system downstream.
When we talk about drinking water quality, we cannot separate it from what is happening to the water cycle as a whole.
And then there is the issue that receives the least attention: municipalities are, on average, drawing water at 104% of their legally authorised abstraction volumes.
In North West, that figure is 224%.
South Africa is a water-scarce country. We do not have surplus water to abstract without authorisation.
The legal and ecological implications of this are serious, and they compound over time as climate variability increases pressure on already strained resources.
Rational fears
I raise all of this not to be alarmist, but because I think South Africans deserve an honest account of where things stand.
The public's anxiety about drinking water is not irrational.
It is a reasonable response to data that has been declining for over a decade and that now rests at a dangerous plateau.
What concerns me further is what happens in the gap between failing municipal systems and a public increasingly desperate for alternatives.
That gap is being filled in part by unregulated, illegal, and unsafe operators.
Refill water shops and unlicensed bottling operations are proliferating in areas where tap water is unreliable or distrusted.
These businesses frequently present themselves as food-safe facilities.
They are not.
They do not comply with the food legislation, hygiene controls, and testing requirements that govern legitimate bottled water operations.
The consumer has no way of knowing the difference.
This is a growing public health concern, and SANBWA, as a not-for-profit industry body, is committed to raising these issues with municipal environmental health departments and the Department of Health wherever we encounter them.
We are also working with academic institutions and health authorities on research and practical interventions to ensure that all drinking water alternatives meet the required legal and safety standards.
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Next steps
SANBWA welcomes the Water Services Amendment Bill, the National Water Action Plan, and the emerging utility partnership models as meaningful steps.
But policy architecture without implementation is just architecture.
Fifty-two of the 105 worst-performing water services authorities had still not submitted corrective action plans by February 2026.
The gap between commitment and action remains wide.
South Africa's water sector needs a recovery plan that is funded, staffed, enforced, and honestly communicated to the public.
The commercial bottled water industry, which is regulated, licensed, and tested, is not the solution to municipal failure.
But we are part of the water landscape, and we have both a stake and a responsibility in ensuring that landscape is safe.
The reports confirm what many of us already knew.
The question now is whether the response will match the scale of the problem.
About the author
Charlotte Metcalf is the CEO of the South African National Bottled Water Association (SANBWA).