Nearly half of South Africa’s municipal wastewater treatment systems are in a critical state of performance, according to the department of water and sanitation’s latest Green Drop assessment, and the machinery meant to turn that around is showing the strain. Of the 848 municipal wastewater systems assessed during the 2023/24 financial year, 396 were classified as critical, up from 334, or 39%, in the 2022 report. The proportion performing at good or excellent levels fell from 14% to 8%. Only 14 systems achieved Green Drop certification, compared with 22 previously.
The numbers came from water and sanitation minister Pemmy Majodina in a written parliamentary reply to IFP MP Nhlanhla Hadebe, who asked what the department was doing about failing wastewater treatment systems, how many facilities were noncompliant, whether municipalities had implemented remedial plans, and what funding was available for upgrades.
The Green Drop programme assesses the management of wastewater systems, covering infrastructure, operational capacity, maintenance, compliance, monitoring and management practices. It gives the department a mechanism to identify facilities requiring intervention. The latest assessment covered systems across the country.
The geographic spread of failure is wide. The department’s annexure lists critical wastewater facilities in all nine provinces, indicating the problem is not confined to a handful of municipalities. The Free State has the highest provincial total at 81 critical systems, followed by the Eastern Cape with 67 and the Northern Cape with 66. KwaZulu-Natal has 61, the Western Cape 31, Limpopo and North West 29 each, Gauteng 23 and Mpumalanga 10. In Gauteng, the critical list includes 10 systems under the City of Johannesburg, among them Northern Works and Olifantsvlei, as well as the Rooiwal Eastern and Northern works in Pretoria. In KwaZulu-Natal, 19 critical systems sit under eThekwini municipality, including facilities serving Amanzimtoti, Isipingo, KwaMashu, New Germany, Phoenix, Southern, Tongaat, Umbilo and Verulam.
Restoring these facilities depends on corrective action plans, which municipalities with critical systems are required to prepare or update. Of the 90 municipalities identified in the 2022 Green Drop report as having critical wastewater systems, 79 submitted plans and all had begun implementation, according to the department, which says it continues to monitor those plans, provide support where necessary and take enforcement action against water services authorities that failed to submit them.
The annexure, however, tells a different story. Several municipalities identified in the earlier assessment have not submitted corrective action plans. These include Masilonyana and Nketoana in the Free State, uMkhanyakude in KwaZulu-Natal, and several Northern Cape municipalities, among them Kamiesberg, Karoo Hoogland, Kai Garib and !Kheis, Magareng, Phokwane and Sol Plaatjie. Kgetlengrivier in the North West was also listed as having failed to submit a plan.
Parliament’s portfolio committee on water and sanitation flagged the compliance gap in June, warning that municipalities’ failure to submit and implement corrective action plans was undermining efforts to restore failing wastewater systems. The committee noted that the rise in critical systems from 334 in 2022 to 396 in 2025 came alongside a decline in good or excellent performance. It also highlighted a shortage of skilled personnel: only 1,151 of the 2,431 process controllers required nationally were employed at the time of its briefing.
There is no single deadline for restoring all the critical systems, the department said, because timeframes depend on the nature and extent of the work required. Refurbishment involving civil works or pumps could take about a year. Facilities that have completely collapsed and cannot be refurbished could require decommissioning and the construction of new infrastructure, which would take longer.
Funding is flowing, at least on paper. The department has allocated R2.923bn to wastewater infrastructure upgrades in the 2026/27 financial year, covering 87 projects funded through the Regional Bulk Infrastructure Grant and the Water Services Infrastructure Grant. It has also introduced an internal review process for critical wastewater treatment plants and amended its annual performance plan to track the number of critical systems monitored against Green Drop requirements.
Enforcement is increasingly part of the response. The department currently has 96 criminal cases against 53 water services authorities regarding wastewater management failures. The regulatory approach is being considered alongside proposed legislative changes: the portfolio committee said in June that the Water Services Amendment Bill would strengthen the department’s ability to act against water services authorities that fail to implement corrective measures.
The latest figures extend a longer decline. The 2022 assessment found 334 systems in a critical state, a deterioration from 30% of municipal wastewater systems in 2013 to 39% in 2022. The government has previously linked the deterioration to ageing infrastructure, inadequate maintenance, shortages of technical skills, weak financial management and governance problems.
Whether the R2.923bn allocation and the pending amendment bill can reverse that trajectory before the next Green Drop assessment is the open question now facing the department.