The Water Crisis in South Africa

Hinzugefügt: 2026-05-17

[00:00:00]In South Africa, water is the crisis that has largely been drowned out by the louder noise of the power cuts, but water may ultimately prove even more damaging. Across South Africa, approximately 47% of all treated drinking water is lost before it reaches a customer. Nearly half of all the water that gets cleaned and pumped into the distribution system leaks out through crumbling, decades-old [music] pipes, broken meters, and illegal connections before it reaches anyone's tap. In early 2024, roughly half of Johannesburg's 5.5 million residents had no water or severe supply shortages for weeks at a time.

[00:00:34]64% of South Africa's wastewater treatment plants are classified as high risk. The rivers [music] feeding the local water supply carried untreated effluent, and people got sick and died from drinking water in a country that has been a functioning industrial economy for over 100 years.