The Democratic Alliance (DA) will request the Department of Water and Sanitation (DWS) to intervene in the ongoing deterioration of the water value chain in Limpopo.
A scathing report by Provincial Treasury on the state of municipal finances in the province for the first six months of the financial year, paints a grim picture on the lack of sustainability of water supplies across the province.
The report highlighted concerning water losses, derived from kilolitres purchased against kilolitres sold, including:
· Thabazimbi Local Municipality-78%; an increase of 2% from the previous financial year,
· Lephalale Local Municipality- 40%, an increase of 40.5% from the previous financial year,
· Capricorn District – 38%; an increase of 9% from the previous financial year,
· Sekhukhune District- 37%,
· Bela-Bela Local Municipality- 37%,
· Mopani District – 22%, and
· Vhembe District incurred 74% water losses during the 2024/25 financial year and recorded a -612% for the current year, indicative of non-existing reconciliation procedures.
Against the backdrop of staggering water losses, Limpopo Municipalities spend on average 3% on repairs and maintenance with Lepelle Nkumpi the only municipality exceeding the 8% norm at 11%.
Blouberg, Sekhukhune and Waterberg municipalities spent 0% followed by Maruleng, Mopani, Collins Chabane and Lephalale municipalities who spent 1% on maintenance and repairs.
The dire situation is exacerbated by dysfunctional billing systems; only 5% of municipal income is derived from water billing.
Years of neglect, blatantly ignoring minimum standards and inexperienced officials have left multiple communities without water and water load reduction in areas with existing but unreliable systems.
Despite various requests from the DA over the last decade, the MEC for COGHSTA failed to execute the mandate in terms of Section 139(5) of The Constitution to intervene in municipalities facing financial distress, unable to deliver services, and instead, side stepped the escalating crisis through meaningless political rhetoric and empty promises.
The DA cannot allow the provincial government to disregard the basic right of access to water and request the DWS to initiate a comprehensive turnaround plan where municipalities face a collapse of water infrastructure and billing systems
including:
· Restructuring local service delivery and deploying technical engineers to fix boreholes and restore and stabilise bulk water pipelines,
· Deploy experienced officials to put systems in place to improve and maintain billing systems,
· Track national municipal performance audits, access the DWS Integrated Regulatory Information System (IRIS) and enforce corrective measures to improve water services.
We urge the DWS to prioritise existing projects and to discourage any vanity projects and promises by ANC politicians in the run up to the LGE on 4 November 2026.