More than 800 people in Bronkhorstspruit fell ill with gastrointestinal disease after exposure to sewage-contaminated water. The cost of failing water services is measured in human health, not balance sheets. The South African Human Rights Commission has pointed to the outbreak as evidence of what happens when the constitutional promise of clean, sufficient water goes unkept.
“The failure to deliver quality water is not just another administrative mishap; it has real-life consequences,” said Henk Boshoff, a commissioner at the commission, speaking at the recent launch of the Water Rights Tracker. “The water crisis is impacting lives and livelihoods. We cannot afford to bury our heads in the sand but we must tackle the water crisis head-on.”
The Tracker, a new research project developed by the commission together with the Claude Leon Chair in Earth Justice and Stewardship at the University of the Witwatersrand, gives citizens and oversight bodies a way to see where those failures are occurring. Its headline finding is stark: 107 of South Africa’s 144 water services authorities are in a poor or critical state. The five-year project assesses progress towards realising the constitutional right of access to sufficient water across all nine provinces, providing a framework for identifying failures and holding government accountable.
The scale of the challenge is familiar to anyone who has lived with an unreliable tap. Despite three decades of constitutional democracy, policy reforms and investment in water infrastructure, millions of people still struggle to access sufficient, safe and affordable water. Communities face unreliable supplies, deteriorating infrastructure and unsafe drinking water, and a significant proportion of households still collect water from springs, wells, dams, boreholes, rivers and streams.
Access has improved, though unevenly. Boshoff cited the 2025 General Household Survey, which found that 87.4% of households had piped tap water in their dwellings in 2025, up from 84.4% in 2004. Meanwhile, national non-revenue water, meaning water lost through leaks, theft and other inefficiencies before it generates revenue, stood at an average of 47.3%, representing about R26 billion in annual losses.
Further detail on the crisis and the commission’s response can be found in the original report at https://mg.co.za/the-green-guardian/2026-10-26-bronkhorstspruit-crisis-highlights-sa-s-water-service-failures/.
Professor Tracy-Lynn Field, the chair in Earth Justice and Stewardship and the project’s lead researcher, said the Tracker synthesises information from several datasets, including the department of water and sanitation’s Blue Drop reports, which contain valuable information on water services but are not always fully used. “There’s such valuable information in that report and what our project does is it puts everything in a human rights framing and expands the information that is relevant to the progressive realisation of the right to water,” she said.
The framework rests on the international and South African human rights to water and what progressive realisation of that right entails. “In our project we essentially describe it as policy and legislation, financial resources, infrastructure resources and human resources,” Field said. The Tracker draws on 85 indicators, examining access, affordability, adequacy, quality and efficiency, alongside the financial, technical and institutional resources available to water services authorities.
The work was not confined to the desk. Over the course of a year, researchers engaged with more than 170 officials from water services authorities across the country, mostly technical staff responsible for delivering water. “This project was not only desktop in nature,” Field said. “Through the HRC’s amazing convening powers, we engaged with, over the course of a year, more than 170 officials from water services authorities across the whole country.” Those conversations helped researchers understand the obstacles facing service providers and identify systemic problems.
The practical purpose is accountability. The Tracker identifies “red flags” that can help communities, civil society organisations and oversight institutions spot potential human rights violations and press for corrective action. Field said its findings could also assist institutions beyond the commission, including the department, the South African Local Government Association, parliamentary and provincial legislative committees and the Public Protector.
The commission itself has been active on the ground. It has concluded inquiries into water provision in seven of the nine provinces, with the Western Cape and Eastern Cape still outstanding, and Boshoff said it planned to release its inquiry report on Gauteng on 2 November. He noted that the National Water Action Plan, released by President Cyril Ramaphosa in July this year, had identified poor water governance, weak accountability and the hollowing out of capacity, particularly at municipal level, among the underlying causes of the crisis.
The researchers also caution against simplistic explanations. Dr Johandri Wright, a post-doctoral researcher at the Dullar Omar Institute at the University of the Western Cape who worked on the Tracker, said water provision is a complex function whose success depends on the effective delivery of other services and varies considerably between municipalities. Geographical conditions, the size of municipalities, the availability and quality of raw water sources and other natural factors all shape how services can be delivered and what they cost.
Wright said the findings challenge assumptions about the link between tariffs and quality: there was only a modest correlation between higher tariffs and better water quality, particularly on chemical compliance. High unemployment and economic dependence also do not automatically produce poor water quality or financial failure. She pointed to the OR Tambo district municipality in the Eastern Cape, where unemployment stands at 55.6% and the dependency ratio at 70%, yet revenue sufficiency is 175%. In Amathole, unemployment was 46.2% and the dependency ratio exceeded 65%, yet only 0.66% of households received free basic water. The lesson, she suggested, is that municipal water provision must be assessed through a range of indicators rather than socioeconomic conditions alone.
With local government elections approaching in 2026, the researchers hope the Tracker will place water services and constitutional accountability at the centre of public debate. Section 27 of the Constitution guarantees everyone the right of access to sufficient water and requires the state to take reasonable legislative and other measures, within its available resources, to progressively realise that right.
“Access to sufficient water is not a privilege or a political promise,” Field said. “It is a constitutional right. The Water Rights Tracker offers a means of measuring whether that right is being realised, identifying where failures are occurring and ensuring that those responsible for delivering water services can be held to account.”