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CLUELESS: South Africa’s deepening water crisis of dry taps and rising anger

Politicians from Ramaphosa down are scurrying to address the issue, highlighted by catastrophic problems in the nation’s biggest metro

February 15, 2026 at 06:11 am

Sisanda Mbolekwa

Politics reporter

Residents of Melville and Westdene protest against an ongoing water outage in the area, demanding accountability. (Supplied)

As the government scrambled to put a Band-Aid on the national water crisis, the sheer scale of ineptitude and incompetence in Johannesburg told the story of a city drowning in broken promises.

President Cyril Ramaphosa acknowledged the enormity of the problem in his state of the nation address this week, saying he would personally take charge of a national water crisis committee.

But in Johannesburg, a city of about 6-million people and the economic hub of the country, residents are still in the dark — despite multiple media conferences and the creation of a provincial water crisis war room — as to why hundreds of thousands of them are without water. Some have had no water for almost a month.