As South Africa faces a deepening water crisis, the Human Rights Commission calls for urgent government action, highlighting alarming declines in water quality and wastewater management that threaten public health and the environment.
Image: Pexels / Alex Dos Santos
The state of South Africa's water and sanitation infrastructure is rapidly deteriorating, prompting the South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) to warn of a national disaster and call for urgent government intervention.
Following the release of the Department of Water and Sanitation's 2025 Drop Reports, the SAHRC expressed “serious concern” over data revealing a drastic decline in the quality of drinking water and the functionality of wastewater treatment systems across the country.
The 2025 Green Drop Report, which assesses wastewater treatment systems, paints a grim picture.
The number of facilities achieving Green Drop certification, which is a benchmark for excellence, has plummeted from 22 in 2022 to just 14 in 2025.
Furthermore, the percentage of systems operating at excellent or good levels has sharply decreased from 14% to 8% in the same period.
The SAHRC said the proportion of wastewater systems in a critical state has surged from 39% in 2022 to 47% in 2025. This means nearly half of the country’s wastewater infrastructure is teetering on the brink of failure, putting communities and the environment at significant risk.
“The continued downward trajectory of wastewater systems is nothing but a disaster,” the commission said in a statement on Wednesday.
The commission stated that “almost half of the wastewater systems in the country are at risk of discharging partially treated or untreated water into rivers and the environment”.
The consequences for drinking water quality are equally dire, with the Blue Drop Progress assessment report revealing that 18.4% of all water supply systems assessed fall into the high- or critical-risk categories, with the Northern Cape and Free State provinces showing the highest concentration of troubled systems.
Of particular alarm is the microbiological quality of drinking water, a direct indicator of health risk, it said.
According to the report, a staggering 49% of water supply systems received a high-risk microbiological quality rating.
“The SAHRC is concerned that almost half of the water supply systems are in the high-risk microbiological quality category,” the commission cautioned, adding that households and communities relying on water from those water supply systems face an “immediate detrimental health risk”.
The commission highlighted that failing wastewater systems and poor water quality are significant drivers of waterborne disease outbreaks, underscoring the threat to public health.
Beyond the immediate health crisis, the SAHRC pointed to chronic financial mismanagement in municipalities as a major contributing factor to the infrastructure crisis.
The 2025 No Drop Progress assessment report, which tracks water losses, shows that the national non-revenue water level remains stubbornly high at 47.3%, far exceeding the international average of 30%.
This means that nearly half of all treated water is lost before it can be billed, either through leaks or poor administration.
“In its engagements with municipalities, the SAHRC has noted that municipalities often bemoan inadequate funds as one of the root causes for service delivery failures. Yet, they are losing huge amounts of potential revenue due to high levels of non-revenue water,” said the SAHRC, further indicating that there is a severe lack of meaningful improvement in stemming water losses.
Given the widespread nature of the failures, the SAHRC has formally recommended that the situation be escalated to a national disaster.
The commission also commended the Department of Water and Sanitation for its transparency in releasing the reports, calling them “valuable tools” for assessment.
“The SAHRC urges the government, particularly municipalities, to view the results of the 2025 Green Drop Report and the progress assessment reports on the Blue and No Drop programmes as a wake-up and a clarion call to intensify efforts to urgently remedy the dilapidated water and wastewater systems.”
karen.singh@inl.co.za