AfriForum said this week that the City of Tshwane “stands by while millions of litres of drinking water are lost, and is now attempting to shift the blame for the ongoing water crisis on to the residents of Pretoria”.

The organisation said “nearly 41% of all bulk water introduced into the metro’s water supply system from various sources is lost and never reaches the consumer”, citing the latest available figures on the city’s own data portal.

“Almost 41 litres out of every 100 litres of drinking water received by the metro flows down the city’s roads, ends up in gullies, or simply seeps away into the ground. It never even gets close to the taps of residents who are supposedly wasting water,” said Marais de Vaal, AfriForum’s environmental affairs adviser.

In a letter to the city manager last week, AfriForum asked for “evidence, based on metered and billed consumption, that end-user water consumption in Tshwane is currently above normal seasonal levels”, and for figures on how much water was lost in the Garsfontein Reservoir failure and discarded from Findlay Reservoir after a contamination incident.

In a separate statement yesterday, the City of Tshwane said critically low reservoir levels in the Garsfontein and Klapperkop systems continued to affect several communities, adding: “The challenges have been compounded by infrastructure failures, reduced bulk-water supply and exceptionally high consumption, which has prevented reservoirs from recovering sufficiently.”

Tshwane Mayor Nasiphi Moya said a video of a major leak at Garsfontein circulating on social media was outdated and related to a pipe failure that city teams repaired last week. “The current supply challenges are primarily the result of critically depleted reservoir levels, reduced supply from Rand Water and high water consumption, rather than an ongoing major leak,” the city said.

AfriForum said it had opened emergency water points in Waterkloof Glen and Faerie Glen, where residents may collect “a maximum of 40 litres of water per person per day”.