Chris Hani District Municipality in the Eastern Cape — responsible for water supply to over 800,000 people across a vast rural area — has presided over a decade of water infrastructure failure so complete that commentators described 2024 as "a 10-year anniversary of a huge balls-up."
The municipality's water treatment works are non-functional or operating at a fraction of capacity. Pipelines installed in the apartheid era have not been replaced. New infrastructure projects have been started, abandoned, restarted with new contractors, and abandoned again — each cycle consuming millions in mobilisation costs, penalty payments, and legal fees without producing functional infrastructure.
Multiple administrators have been appointed under Section 139 interventions, each arriving with plans to turn the situation around. None has succeeded. The pattern repeats: an administrator identifies the problems (which are well known), develops a turnaround plan (which requires money and capacity the municipality does not have), secures initial funding (which is spent on consultants and contractors who fail to deliver), and eventually departs — leaving the municipality in the same or worse condition.
Communities in towns like Cradock, Middelburg, and Komani (Queenstown) rely on borehole water, river water, or emergency tanker deliveries. The health consequences include regular outbreaks of waterborne disease. Schools and clinics operate without reliable water supply. Agriculture — the backbone of the local economy — suffers from the same infrastructure failures.