Frustrated residents from Melville, Brixton, and Parktown West took to the streets Tuesday morning, protesting water outages that have left some households without supply for 23 days amid mounting accusations of mismanagement against municipal water authorities.
The demonstration, gathered at the corner of Main Road and 4th Avenue in Melville, marks the latest escalation in growing civil discontent over recurring water infrastructure failures affecting several Johannesburg suburbs.
Protesters directed their anger at both Joburg Water and Rand Water, alleging a complete breakdown in communication and accountability. Many carried signs demanding the removal of Joburg Water’s leadership.
“We want the board of Joburg Water gone,” said one Melville resident, who has lived in the area since 2021. “We want serious ramifications for all of the technicians and the MD of Joburg Water. And quite frankly, [Johannesburg Mayor] Dada Morero, we say you must go.”
The resident, who works for Johannesburg-based water justice organization Jo’burg Can, described 23 consecutive days without running water.
“The dignity that they’re stripping from me, my family, my elderly neighbors is actually an atrocity,” the resident said. “It’s a human rights violation. And they need to answer for where is the money and where is our water.”
According to the resident, a water tower project in Brixton has faced nearly two years of delays due to non-payment of contractors, despite municipal loans taken specifically for water infrastructure development.
“They keep taking out loans for water infrastructure. But instead, right here in Brixton, that project to build that water tower is almost two years delayed now because they’re not paying the contractors,” the protester said.
The demonstrations come hours before Mayor Morero is scheduled to brief media at 9 a.m., where he is expected to address plans for constructing four additional reservoirs. Residents dismissed the announcement as insufficient.
“They’ve been working on building four more reservoirs for years. And it doesn’t matter if it doesn’t get over the line if they’re not paying the contractors,” the resident said. “They can make all the promises they want, but like I said, we’ve been fighting about this for years. They’re not doing anything.”
Protesters also voiced skepticism regarding the upcoming State of the Nation Address, rejecting expectations that the national address would produce meaningful solutions.
“The State of the Nation Address is a very fluffy picture of the country—all the nice things they’re promising to do and what they think they’re going to do. At the end of the day, it’s not putting water in my taps. We don’t want speeches. We don’t want promises. I want water.”
Residents are calling for immediate stabilization of the water system and criticizing current management approaches that attribute shortages to high demand.
“That demand comes from leaks. It comes from burst pipes, and it also comes from areas where basically water is for those who can pay for it and are filling up their Jojo tanks and not caring,” the resident said. “There needs to be ramifications for those people.”
The activist described the current crisis as an “infrastructure day zero,” arguing that the city has reached collapse point not because of water scarcity but due to sustained maintenance failures.
“What needs to happen is they need to actually shut off areas which are high demand, name and shame high users, and throttle those places so we can balance the actual system.”
Protest organizers indicated that similar demonstrations were simultaneously underway in Brixton and Parktown West, with no indication of when the Joburg Water and Rand Water would restore supply or issue formal statements addressing the outages.
Mayor Morero is expected to address the water crisis during his scheduled media briefing later this morning.