For many people living in South Africa, the hollow hiss of a dry tap is becoming a daily norm. Whether it is the indignity of having to trek kilometres to collect water or the sudden, week-long outages that paralyse schools and businesses, the collapse of municipal water services has moved from a peripheral concern to an existential threat.

In response to this crisis, President Cyril Ramaphosa released the National Water Action Plan on 23 July 2026. The plan will be managed by the National Water Crisis Committee, known as Watercom, whose members includes the Department of Water and Sanitation, the National Treasury, the departments responsible for cooperative governance, human settlements, public works and the environment, as well as the South African Police Service. The South African Local Government Association is also included.

The plan hinges on five key actions:

• Responding to water interruptions in priority areas;
• Reforming municipal institutions and financing;
• Unlocking infrastructure investment, including private investment;
• Strengthening legal and regulatory mechanisms;
• Tackling corruption and criminal activity in the water sector.

Here are the four NWAP takeaways you need to know.

Your municipality might stop being your water provider

South Africa is currently a global outlier. The country is one of the few where 144 municipalities simultaneously hold the roles of both water services authority (WSA) (the oversight body responsible for ensuring that people have access to water and sanitation) and water services provider (WSP) (the operational body that provides water, builds infrastructure and fixes the leaks).

This blurring of responsibilities has often allowed political interests and poor governance to override the technical aspects of water delivery, to the extent that 74% of WSAs scored âpoorâ or âcriticalâ in assessments of their drinking water and/or wastewater systems

The proposed Water Services Amendment Bill seeks to address this by requiring all providers to be licensed based on strict technical and financial competence.

If a municipality is ânot willing or ableâ to meet these standards, the law will empower the national government to appoint expert public or private entities to take over operations. This move enforces a professional standard in which oversight and operations are separated, ensuring that those managing water are qualified engineers and technicians rather than generalist administrators.

However, the Water Services Amendment Bill is currently still before Parliamentâs Portfolio Committee on Water and Sanitation and is still in the public consultation phase, meaning full implementation of the new legislation is still months away.

Strategy for 2,688 underserved communities

The plan has identified 2,688 communities that currently lack access to reliable water supply. Distinguishing between those with zero formal infrastructure and those where systems exist but are dysfunctional and recognising that massive pipe-laying projects can take decades, the plan is opting for a two-pronged approach:

• Rural and sparsely populated areas: The focus shifts to immediate, cost-effective solutions such as groundwater development (boreholes), protected springs nd rainwater harvesting.
• Densely populated areas: These will see a prioritisation of national grants to extend existing water supply networks to those currently on the periphery

By choosing rural solutions that donât depend on a municipal grid, the plan aims to deliver the âright to waterâ faster than traditional infrastructure models allowed.

Breaking the âwater tanker mafiaâ and infrastructure sabotage

Many communities that have come to rely on tankers for daily water supply are familiar with what is now widely known as âwater tanker mafiasâ.

These individuals have become a law unto themselves, exploiting the collapse of access to reliable piped water and municipal procurement processes to form organised criminal syndicates.

The plan details the security threat the water tanker mafias pose, including the deliberate sabotage of municipal infrastructure to ensure the contracts keep rolling in.

Under focus area 5 (âaddressing corruption and criminalityâ), the government is shifting focus from treating the water tanker crisis as an administrative issue to one of national security.

The strategy focuses on regaining control over tanker provision and aggressively transitioning back to a âfixed pipeâ model. By removing the market for emergency water, the state removes the incentive for sabotage.

Reducing non-revenue water

The most significant opportunity to fix our water system lies in tackling non-revenue water (NRW), which is the water that simply vanishes through leaks, theft or faulty meters before it can be billed. Currently, South Africa loses a staggering 47% of its national supply.

The NWAP targets this as a national priority. The goal is to drive these losses down from the current plateau to 39.5% by 2031. By treating the repair of thousands of hidden leaks as a âcatalytic actionâ, the state aims to recover nearly 10% of the national supply without building a single new dam.

A plan with no deadlines is bound to fail

While acknowledging the NWAP IS a positive step because the water crisis is finally on the national agenda, water activist Dr Ferrial Adam has criticised the plan as âuninspiringâ, warning that it lacks the operational detail needed for real impact.

A primary concern is the planâs reliance on the private sector. Adam points out that private contractors and water tankers are already widely used without yielding better results. Questioning the strategy, she asked: âWhat exactly do they mean when they say we must get private sector involvement?â

She warned that trying to âsell off your problemâ to private entities fails to fix root issues and risks exacerbating existing inequalities. Another point of contention is that while it took months to pull the plan together, it lacks clear timelines, budget allocations and enforcement mechanisms.

âThe problem with the action plan is that itâs once again a plan where we donât have actual timelines, deadlines. How do we hold them accountable?â

Adam also argued that the document treats systemic failure purely as an engineering issue while ignoring rampant industrial pollution and failing wastewater treatment works.

âThey treat it as a technical engineering problem when they should actually think of the whole... then they would understand that this needs more than just that,â she said. DM