Just three years after the Eastern Cape emerged from a once-in-a-century drought, Nelson Mandela Bay is heading back to a Day Zero. This time, not due to an intense drought, but as a direct result of the mismanagement of our water resources.
The Nelson Mandela Bay Municipality currently cannot account for more than half of the bulk water that comes into the city. Non-revenue water has reached a record high of 60.4% by September 2025. This means that the city is wasting most of its water and is effectively causing its own drought crisis with dam levels now more or less standing at 40%.
The municipality invested more than one billion rand in water augmentation and drought-mitigation projects, increasing bulk water supply by 100 megalitres per day between 2021 and 2023. Sadly, this investment made little difference to water security as broken pipes and leaking reservoirs are wasting our water resources.
Instead of ensuring that maintenance and repair programmes make progress with curbing water losses, the city is losing even more. To add insult to injury, little to none of the revenue collected through punitive water tariffs over the past few years has been invested in fixing our fragile water infrastructure.
I have now written to the Minister of Water and Sanitation, Pemmy Majodina, and her Head of Department and requested their immediate intervention. The city desperately needs a Water Services Master Plan dictating which infrastructure must be upgraded and where maintenance and repair programmes should focus.
It is clear that the current administration cannot be trusted to manage Nelson Mandela Bay’s water resources on its own.
The DA successfully steered this city through the drought crisis in 2023. Since our government was replaced by an inept ANC/EFF coalition, we have gone back to square one.
Only a DA majority government can get Nelson Mandela Bay working again. We will not only fill the vacancies for engineers, plumbers and artisans, we will also ensure that there is long term water sustainability plan in place.
Together we can get Nelson Mandela Bay working again.