Media: Where are the exposes? Johannesburg’s Labour Court closed on 25 September because it had no water. One Upper Melville household has recorded disrupted supply on 50 of 59 days. The connected picture of infrastructure failure across Joburg is the story. @mailandguardian@dailymaverick@eNCA@News24
@JHBWater@Rand_Water@Eskom_SA@DadaMorero@CityofJoburgZA After the September outages, we were promised backup power, mobile substations, greater redundancy & accelerated upgrades. Today the system tripped again. We need dated progress, not another assurance that pumping has resumed 1/4
@JHBWater@Rand_Water@Eskom_SA@DadaMorero@CityofJoburgZA Communication has improved marginally. Supply has not. We need a formal Commando recovery update and dated progress on every promised resilience measure. Residents: keep tracking supply, pressure, tankers, costs, and notices. Evidence makes neglect harder to hide.
@JHBWater@Rand_Water@Eskom_SA@DadaMorero@CityofJoburgZA Our household tracker now covers 59 days:
• 9 full-supply days
• 21 days with no water
• 10 intermittent
• 19 nights only
That is disrupted supply on 50 of 59 days. Municipal tankers were available on only 5 of the 21 zero-water days. @PresidencyZA Where is WATERCOM?
No water since last week, not a drop.
Water came back for a day on Saturday and then not A. Single. Fcuking. Drop.
Yet they are telling us in Crosby West that they will be throttling, throttling what?
Water is a daily basic human right. Can the @IntlCrimCourt@CIJ_ICJ kindly remind South Africa @GovernmentZA President @CyrilRamaphosa@PresidencyZA@MYANC@DIRCO_ZA that they filed a case against Apartheid Genocidal Israel for this very same violation on the Palestinians in Gaza in 2023, yet they are committing the same on their citizens.
Where is our water 💧 going to? @JHBWater@CityofJoburgZA@CityPowerJhb
4th Communication with no Response.
I mean, households like mine that have had running water for only NINE of the last 47 days and aren't guaranteed a return of water, we have NO WATER to spare. On the other hand, will our current situation change, and will we have more reliable water to conserve if others do? That would be nice. However, since we have had NO word from @JHBWater@Rand_Water@Eskom_SA@CityPowerJhb about YOUR joint capacity to ensure reliable water in the first place, I have no hope.
You can't even supply reliable water to Johannesburg. Your own water plants are facing "energy poverty." And the very millions you speak of - from suburbs to townships - are without water currently.
It says EVERYTHING we need to know; since we've been making this issue public, that there has been zero public address on this issue.
Residents: track every on/off time, pressure change, tanker promise or no-show, cost, notice and reference number. Coordinate with your street, ward & neighbouring communities. Share the evidence. Some are using the circulated spreadsheet pictured. Reach out if you need one.
One complaint can be ignored. An organised public cannot.
@DadaMorero@CityofJoburgZA@CityPowerJhb@Rand_Water@PresidencyZA@mailandguardian@News24@dailymaverick 5/6
What does this mean practically? More importantly, what are you doing in the interim? I can almost guarantee that within this 2-week "recovery period", another outage will halt pumping and we will regress again. At this stage, it feels like we must resign ourselves to never having a steady supply of water, and THAT is what we want answered. Because this is beyond just a @JHBWater problem. It's @Rand_Water, it's @CityPowerJhb, it's @Eskom_SA, and it's a connected issue that @DadaMorero should be speaking to. Since nobody is actually speaking to our needs, we continue with our tracking, our protests, and engaging @PresidencyZA because what ever happened to WATERCOM? Oh, and not a tanker in sight.
8/8 We need a joint briefing, numerical recovery updates, reliable emergency water, and a dated plan to protect critical water infrastructure from power failures.
We are tracking every outage, every response, and every silence. We will keep organizing. @DadaMorero@PresidencyZA@JHBWater@CityPowerJhb@Rand_Water@Eskom_SA
We are not going away.
1/8 Johannesburg does not have only a Johannesburg Water problem. It has an interdependent infrastructure crisis.
Since 1 August, my household has had just 9 full days of water. This weekend showed again how one power failure can push a fragile water system back into collapse. @Rand_Water@CityPowerJhb@Eskom_SA@CityofJoburgZA@DadaMorero@PresidencyZA
7/8 This morning’s Melville water protest was small. Its significance is not its size.
It was shared across WhatsApp and community groups, and residents are connecting across wards. The longer leadership treats this crisis as routine, the wider that organising will become. @CityPowerJhb@Eskom_SA@Rand_Water@DadaMorero@PresidencyZA
5/8 There has been much PR around the fact that loadshedding has been avoided. But “no load-shedding” is not the same as reliable electricity. Local and unplanned outages still stop pumps. When that happens, Johannesburg’s fragile water network fails with them. @CityPowerJhb@Eskom_SA@Rand_Water@DadaMorero@PresidencyZA
4/8 This is the cycle:
Power failure, burst pipe or valve failure. Reservoirs collapse. Days without water. Perhaps a few hours overnight. Slow recovery. Then the next failure.
These are not isolated incidents. They are one repeating systems failure. @CityPowerJhb@Rand_Water@DadaMorero@PresidencyZA
3/8 At 07:37 today:
Crosby Reservoir: 12%
Brixton Reservoir: 27%
Brixton Tower: 0%
Hursthill 1 and 2: on bypass, supply constrained
For Commando residents, “100% pumping” does not mean water. It means another slow recovery from depleted infrastructure.
@CityPowerJhb@Eskom_SA@DadaMorero@PresidencyZA