– Vhembe District’s water losses exceed 50%, while close to 100 000 households remain without water.
– This crisis is worsening Vhembe’s financial position.
– The DA would ring-fence water revenue, maintain infrastructure, reduce losses, enforce credit control and appoint competent staff.
The Democratic Alliance in Limpopo is deeply concerned by Vhembe District Municipality’s failure, as the district’s Water Services Authority, to provide reliable water, alongside its deteriorating financial and governance position. It is precisely because of failures such as these — in Vhembe and by other Water Services Authorities across Limpopo — that the DA supports the proposed Water Services Amendment Bill, which is currently the subject of public participation in the province.
The Bill intends to introduce stronger licensing, minimum staff competency and enforcement requirements for water-service providers, while making it easier to intervene where persistent service-delivery failures occur.
As both the Water Services Authority and Water Services Provider across the district, Vhembe carries ultimate responsibility for potable water delivery.
However, in 2023, the South African Human Rights Commission found Vhembe to be in violation of section 27 of the Constitution, failing to comply with the Water Services Act and failing to provide reliable access to water. It directed Vhembe to implement a time-bound remedial plan, but subsequent monitoring found that its recommendations remained unimplemented and communities remained without water.
Provincial Treasury now estimates that Vhembe loses more than 50% of the water entering its distribution system, linking this to ageing infrastructure and inadequate maintenance. It records that 93,059 households, or 21.3%, remain without water access.
Vhembe’s own report confirms water losses of around half, maintenance below the 8% benchmark, and 24 water tankers serving underserved and unserved communities. Reliance on tankers while enormous volumes of water are lost points to crisis management instead of permanent infrastructure maintenance.
Vhembe’s financial health cannot be separated from its failure to manage its water system effectively. Its 2026/27 budget is unfunded, while Treasury identifies low revenue collection, grant dependence and weak credit control and debt collection as major risks.
By June, water-service revenue amounted to R347.4 million against an adjusted R772.9 million — 45%. Its debtor book stood at approximately R3.17 billion, with most more than a year old.
The cycle is clear: water is treated and distributed but not converted into billable revenue; weak revenue constrains maintenance; deteriorating infrastructure causes further losses; and communities remain dependent on unreliable supply and tankers.
Vhembe also records the Municipal Manager, CFO, Manager Expenditure, Manager Supply Chain and Manager Credit Control among officials whose minimum competency status remains “in progress” or “ongoing”.
Vhembe’s water, financial and governance crises are all symptoms of the same failure of ANC governance.
The DA’s 2026 Local Government Manifesto offers the opposite approach: ring-fence water and sanitation revenue for water infrastructure, maintain assets before they fail, repair leaks and ageing networks, enforce credit control, and appoint competent people on merit.
That is how we get water flowing through taps again — and get Vhembe working.