Water Affairs ministry said 47% of the country’s wastewater treatment systems have worsened and are in a critical condition.
This is according to water and sanitation minister Pemmy Majodina, who released the Green Drop Report 2025 on Tuesday.
The wastewater treatment plants are facilities that treat and purify water for consumption however, these facilities are now in a critical state posing risks for illnesses.
The report covers the results of 848 wastewater treatment systems audited during the 2023/24 municipal financial year.
Majodina said the findings were concerning, with systems in a critical state increasing from 39% (334 systems) in 2022 to 47% (396 systems) in 2025.
“Conversely, systems performing at excellent or good levels have declined from 14% (118 systems) to 8% (66 systems),” she said.
“Only 14 Green Drop certifications were achieved this year, down from 22 in 2022, highlighting a deterioration in municipal wastewater performance.”
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Majodina said the Green Drop report was complemented by progress assessment reports for Blue Drop and No Drop, covering drinking water quality and water-use efficiency for the 2023/24 municipal financial year.
Nationally, drinking water systems showed marginal improvement, with low-risk systems increasing from 60.2% to 61.9%, and critical-risk systems decreasing from 9.9% to 7.9%.
Majodina said provincial performance remained uneven, with the Western Cape and Gauteng maintaining the strongest overall risk profiles, while Mpumalanga and North West recorded notable improvements.
The Northern Cape continued to perform poorly, with the highest concentration of critical-risk systems and severe weaknesses across multiple indicators.
Majodina added that the Free State remained a source of material concern.
“The underlying causes of poor performance in terms of Drop reports include nonadherence to standard operating procedures for drinking water treatment and wastewater treatment, infrastructure in poor condition due to lack of maintenance and municipalities failing to hire qualified staff or prioritise budgets for maintenance and operations.
“Weak billing and revenue collection, poor municipal leadership and management, and the absence of a legal requirement for municipalities to use water and sanitation revenue for maintenance further exacerbate the problem.”
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Howeer, she said that drinking water systems in major metropolitan areas were generally performing well.
“The findings of the drop reports are corroborated by research from the department of co-operative governance, National Treasury, the auditor-general and other institutions, all of which indicate that many municipalities lack the capability to discharge their governance and service delivery mandates effectively.
“These challenges are further worsened by organised criminality, corruption, vandalism, attacks on critical water and energy infrastructure, and infrastructure decay.”
Majodina said there were municipalities, treatment works, engineers, process controllers and other professionals who were demonstrating that excellence in wastewater management was possible even under difficult conditions.
However, she added that without competent personnel, disciplined operations, effective governance and consequence management, infrastructure would continue to fail and communities would continue to suffer.
Sowetan
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