Explosion at water treatment plant throttles Joburg supply

An explosion at Africa’s biggest water-treatment plant is curbing supplies in a system that serves more than 11 million people, the latest setback highlighting the decay of infrastructure in South Africa.

The Tuesday blast at the Zuikerbosch facility, about 70km south of Johannesburg, disrupted bulk supply to parts of Gauteng – the nation’s richest province – after a motor connected to one of the pumps in an engine room failed and forced a temporary shutdown, according to Rand Water, the continent’s biggest bulk-water supplier.

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While supply was partially restored on Tuesday evening, with pumping capacity cut to 75%, suburbs served by three reservoirs in the Palmiet, Eikenhof and Mapleton systems are experiencing low water pressure or temporary outages, Rand Water said in a statement on Wednesday.

Palmiet supplies large parts of Johannesburg and the east of Pretoria, while Eikenhof serves Soweto and parts of the old CBD. The Mapleton system feeds the eastern Gauteng towns of Germiston through to Springs.

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The outages are the latest sign of a water supply crisis that’s affecting some of the country’s biggest cities because of inadequate maintenance, limited investment in infrastructure, and poor management.

Last year, parts of Johannesburg were left without water for weeks after reservoirs struggled to recover from scheduled maintenance and as criminals vandalised a key pipeline.

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A year earlier, a large section of the city endured an extended outage after a lightning strike affected a major pump station.

Johannesburg’s water utility has a R26.9 billion infrastructure backlog, municipal documents seen by Bloomberg in 2024 showed.

© 2026 Bloomberg

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