- Stats SA shows that access to piped or tap water in Limpopo has fallen from about 79% in 2015 to just 63.2% in 2025.
- Limpopo now has the lowest water access in South Africa, while all 10 Water Services Authorities are rated poor or critical by DWS.
- At the heart of the crisis lies years of failed municipal governance under the ANC.
Water provision in Limpopo is going backwards despite billions spent. Access to piped or tap water has declined by almost 20% over the past decade, leaving Limpopo with the lowest level of access of any province. The South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) identified the cause: failed governance. Only better municipal governance will turn it around — and the DA in Limpopo has little confidence that the ANC has either the will or the ability to do so.
Stats SA’s 2025 General Household Survey, released in May 2026, shows that access to piped or tap water fell from about 79% in 2015 to just 63.2% in 2025.
Over the same period, billions of rand have been allocated to water infrastructure and municipal Water Services Authorities (WSAs) across Limpopo. Yet households have less access to piped water than they did a decade ago.
That is not progress. It is a decade of decline under the ANC.
The problem is therefore not simply a lack of money. It is what happens to that money once it reaches failing municipalities.
ANC-led municipalities and the provincial government cannot claim they did not know what was wrong.
Following mounting complaints, the SAHRC held a province-wide inquiry into Limpopo’s WSAs in 2021. Its final report, released in October 2023, found that most WSAs were failing to meet their constitutional and statutory obligations to provide access to sufficient water. It identified insufficient skills, poor planning, weak execution and failure to properly spend water grants as underlying causes.
The DA’s alternative starts exactly where the SAHRC identified the failures: appoint capable people on merit, ring-fence water revenue, maintain infrastructure, reduce losses, complete projects, strengthen revenue collection and enforce consequences for failure.
The SAHRC also found failures of provincial oversight, including by the Office of the Premier and CoGHSTA. All 10 WSAs were required to produce time-bound corrective plans, while provincial authorities were required to support and monitor compliance.
Yet the problems continued. The SAHRC’s 2024/25 monitoring found recommendations unimplemented in Vhembe, intermittent water supply in Bela-Bela and Thabazimbi, and continuing shortages in Sekhukhune. It concluded that water problems continued with “little or no attention”.
In September 2025, the Department of Water and Sanitation (DWS) listed all 10 Limpopo WSAs among South Africa’s 105 worst-performing water authorities. Mogalakwena, Polokwane, Thabazimbi and Vhembe were classified as critical, while the remaining six were rated poor.
The governance crisis is also becoming a financial crisis. In July 2026, National Treasury temporarily withheld equitable-share transfers from Mopani, Thabazimbi and Modimolle-Mookgophong because of persistent and serious financial-management failures. Their funding was later released subject to corrective commitments, including arrangements to address substantial bulk-water debt.
The DA has repeatedly exposed the same pattern across Limpopo: failing infrastructure, rising water losses, delayed projects, weak revenue collection, no financial ring-fencing and growing dependence on tankers — all leaving communities without reliable water.
Residents should not have to live from tanker to tanker and promise to promise.
Limpopo’s water crisis is not simply a crisis of broken pipes, ageing pumps and failing treatment plants. At its root is a crisis of governance under the ANC.
The SAHRC diagnosed the governance failure. The ANC was told how to fix it, but failed to turn it around. The DA will govern our municipalities differently.
For residents, the test is simple: when you open the tap, clean water must come out.