Over the years the people of Emfuleni have endured indignity that is comparable to no other area in Gauteng.
The Emfuleni local municipality has been facing a severe, long-standing wastewater crisis involving failing sewage treatment works, collapsing pump stations and widespread infrastructure damage.
The collapse of the system has been so severe that it caused untreated sewage to flow into streets, residential properties and the Vaal River.
The South African Human Rights Commission has repeatedly declared the Emfuleni wastewater and sewage crisis a prima facie violation of fundamental human rights — specifically the rights to access clean water, a clean environment and human dignity.
And there is no other way to describe the situation that has escalated into a severe public health and environmental crisis. For residents in townships such as Boipatong, Tshepong, and Vaal, overflowing manholes and burst pipes have been a way of life for many years.
The situation led to the national government instituting a section 63 intervention — a takeover of water and sanitation services designed to resolve the Vaal River sewage crisis and restore dignity through reliable service delivery.
The department of water and sanitation appointed Rand Water as the implementing agent to manage the structural reset of wastewater treatment. The intervention has three core objectives.
The first targets the refurbishment and upgrade of failing wastewater treatment works, pump stations, and sewer pipelines. Second, Rand Water and national departments have deployed heavy machinery, tankers, and support to clear major blockages, stop raw sewage from flowing into the Vaal River, and drastically reduce residential spillages.
And third, along with physical repairs, the intervention includes a long-term revenue enhancement strategy to secure the financial sustainability of the municipality’s water assets.
To address the problem, Rand Water implemented the Sedibeng Regional Sewer Scheme, an ongoing, multibillion-rand presidential catalytic infrastructure project. It is designed to eradicate raw sewage spillages into the Vaal River, increase regional wastewater treatment capacity by more than 200-million litres per day, and unlock economic and residential development in Gauteng generally.
The holistic programme encompasses work in at least four wastewater treatment works, bulk pipelines, and more than 40 pump stations in the Emfuleni and Midvaal local municipalities. Since the section 63 intervention, there have been important developments worth noting.
The first is the completion of the Rothdene pump station, which has a 625-litre-per-second capacity, and its associated 4.7km bulk rising main pipeline. The second is upgrades to the Meyerton wastewater treatment works, which are a critical component of the broader intervention.
The third, and most significant, is the recently constructed 50-megalitre wastewater treatment plant at the Sebokeng wastewater treatment works, which marks the first major addition of treatment capacity in the region in more than 30 years.
The fact that it has taken more than three decades to deal with this crisis is unconscionable. Equally debilitating is that until Rand Water was given powers to implement section 63, the Emfuleni local municipality had spent hundreds of millions of rand on the problem.
Between 2020 and 2025, the municipality appointed 71 service providers to deal with sewage leaks. The contractors were appointed to a panel for three years on a term contract. The crisis persisted, and only now, with a capable water board led by an experienced water scientist and highly qualified team, is the tide turning.
The lesson in Emfuleni is clear for many other municipalities in the province: the solution to resolving the water and wastewater crisis sits at the intersection of national oversight, technical expertise, and local accountability.
Section 63 interventions have delivered measurable benefits in municipalities in all provinces where they have been implemented. The revolving door of contractors is no match for the engineering excellence, operational consistency and project discipline that rest in capable institutions which have demonstrated capacity to operate in complex infrastructure environments.
The issue in Emfuleni went beyond the collapse of service delivery and infrastructure — it was fundamentally about the violation of human dignity. We may now see people being treated with the dignity they have been denied for decades.
Sowetan
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