The KZN South Coast — marketed as a holiday paradise for domestic and international tourists — conceals a public health catastrophe. According to the Department of Water and Sanitation's Green Drop Report, not a single one of Ugu District Municipality's 19 sewage treatment plants is properly treating sewage. Zero out of 19.
Raw sewage flows into the uMzimkulu, uMtwalume and other rivers, and from there onto beaches that are supposed to attract tourists. The DWS has issued warnings about water quality at multiple beach locations. E. coli counts at some monitoring points exceed safe limits by hundreds of times. Swimming in these waters poses serious health risks, but signage is inadequate and enforcement non-existent.
To compound the crisis, communities in the Ugu district endured 103 consecutive days without water in 2023. More than three months where taps produced nothing. Residents — many of them elderly and in rural areas — were forced to walk kilometres to collect water from the same rivers receiving raw sewage. The municipality that cannot treat sewage is also the municipality that cannot supply water. The tourism economy that sustains thousands of local jobs is collapsing as word spreads about polluted beaches and unreliable services.