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Rand Water Reservoirs Plunge

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Rand Water Reservoirs Plunge:

Dear Editor

The Democratic Alliance is deeply alarmed by the rapid collapse in Rand Water’s system storage, which has fallen from around 55% to just below 40% in under a week. This has triggered throttling across the province, leaving communities without water and exposing how vulnerable Gauteng’s water supply system has become.

Reports from across the province confirm the scale of the crisis:

  • Merafong has been particularly hard hit, with Carletonville essentially without water and large parts of Fochville experiencing severe outages.
  • In Johannesburg, areas including Brixton – where the stalled tower and reservoir project should have added resilience – are experiencing reduced flows.
  • In Ekurhuleni, Bedfordview residents are facing outages, despite the completion of reservoir repairs that were meant to protect supply.
  • Tshwane is also reporting widespread pressure drops and outages as the system buckles.

I have written to the Chairperson of Parliament’s Portfolio Committee on Water and Sanitation to request that he summon both the Minister of Water and Sanitation and Rand Water to urgently account to the Committee. They must explain what steps are being taken to stabilise supply, protect Gauteng communities, and ensure that the system can withstand the increased demand of the coming summer months.

This crisis is being made worse by the failure of municipalities to complete vital water resilience infrastructure such as reservoirs and towers. These projects are supposed to provide a buffer during high demand, but delays, stalled construction, and mismanagement have left communities dangerously exposed.

With temperatures now climbing as Gauteng moves into late August and spring, demand will only rise. If this is the state of the system now, Gauteng faces a catastrophic summer of water insecurity.

The people of Gauteng cannot afford for government to continue on a “business as usual” path while water runs out. Urgent intervention is required now to prevent a full-scale collapse.

Regards

Stephen Moore MP
DA Spokesperson on Water & Sanitation

– MyZA

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The Geological Miracle of the Witwatersrand

The very existence of Johannesburg is a geological fluke. Unlike most major global cities, Johannesburg was not built near a river, a coast, or a natural harbor. It sits 1,753 meters above sea level on a rocky ridge called the Witwatersrand (Ridge of White Waters). This ridge is the edge of the world’s largest known gold deposit, formed over 2 billion years ago when an ancient inland sea began to evaporate, leaving behind layers of gold-bearing conglomerate.

When George Harrison, an Australian prospector, stumbled upon an outcrop of gold on the farm Langlaagte in 1886, he triggered a “gold rush” that changed the course of African history. Within a decade, a dusty collection of tents and wagons transformed into a permanent city of brick and mortar. The “Main Reef” proved so vast that it eventually produced nearly 40% of all the gold ever mined in human history. This geological wealth dictated the city’s layout: the mining belt runs east-to-west across the city’s center, creating a physical divide between the wealthy northern suburbs and the industrial, working-class south. Today, while most mines within the city limits have closed due to the extreme depth and cost of extraction (some mines reached over 3.9 kilometers underground), the physical legacy remains in the form of “mine dumps”—massive yellow-white hills of crushed rock and sand that define the Joburg skyline.