SA's water crisis is a lived reality needing urgent reforms

SOUTH Africa's localised water crises are no longer looming threats but lived realities in many parts of the country.

- ANJA DU PLESSIS

They are measurable, widespread and visible - destroying ecosystems, threatening public health and disrupting daily life in ways that can no longer be dismissed as isolated failures.

The recent briefing to Parliament by the Auditor-General of South Africa (AGSA), drawing on the country's first fully consolidated audit of the entire water value chain, lays bare a system in deep distress.

For the first time, audits of national departments, water boards and 135 Water Services Authorities (WSAs) were consolidated to present a single, coherent picture.

What emerged was not merely one of financial mismanagement, but of weakened governance, failing infrastructure and escalating risks to human and environmental health - failures long warned about by experts.