South Africa: Taps Dry As Municipality Drowns in R1-Billion Debt

Residents of the Kai !Garib Local Municipality in the Northern Cape face collapsing services, frequent water interruptions, and potholed roads

Residents of the Kai !Garib Local Municipality in the Northern Cape face collapsing services, frequent water interruptions, and potholed roads.

The municipality has debt of more than R1-billion, most of it owed to Eskom.

The municipality's Blue Drop and Green Drop scores have dropped, with nearly all of its water and wastewater treatment works marked critical or high risk.

SA Human Rights commissioner Nomahlubi Khwinana has suggested the municipality be put under administration.

The National Treasury recently announced it would be freezing equitable share grants to 69 municipalities, including Kai !Garib, to "instil fiscal discipline and ensure that public money is properly managed".

Kakamas resident André Smith says the water pressure is so low he can place a bucket under a tap and walk to town. By the time he is back, "the bucket still isn't full", he says.

Residents in the semi-arid, Northern Cape Kai !Garib Local Municipality told GroundUp they frequently experience water outages or problems with water pressure.

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"The water situation has not improved, it has worsened. And the quality of the water is concerning," said Smith. "Now, the water has too much bleach in it."

He says you can smell the chlorine in the water.

"If we struggle with water for a month, we must still pay our rates. Why must we pay for something we are not using?"

He said they had complained to the Department of Water and Sanitation (DWS). "We complained in December, January, and February, while it was extremely hot. At the end of the day, nothing has improved," said Smith.

The Kai !Garib's water crisis comes as the municipality is drowning in R1-billion debt. Situated on the southern edge of the Kalahari Desert on the banks of the Orange River, it has several towns, the largest being Kakamas, Keimoes and Kenhardt.

While temperatures soar in summer, old and failing infrastructure often leaves residents without water for days and facing frequent sewage spills. For years, the municipal water and sewage treatment plants have deteriorated, and are now in a critical state.

Water services

The municipality's overall DWS Blue Drop score for water services dropped from 71% in 2014 to 16% in 2023.

All 16 of its water treatment plants providing drinking water to residents were rated high or critical risk.

The municipality's 2025 audited financial statements show water losses in 2024 at 68% and in 2025 at 58%.

Earlier this year, DWS deputy minister Sello Seitlholo criticised the ANC-run municipality for its "poor performance" in water infrastructure.

In Kakamas, Smith has made it his mission to hold the municipality accountable.

Smith also took issue with the quality of the water they receive. He has lodged several complaints to the department about "dirty water" and the municipality's lack of accountability.

In October, the South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) held hearings into the state of service delivery in local Northern Cape municipalities, particularly around the provision of water.

The commission raised concerns about the high cost of water trucks and the amounts paid by the Kai !Garib Municipality to contractors. The municipality spends an average of R1.5-million per month on outsourced water tankers. According to audited financial statements for the year ending June 2025, the municipality spent over R20-million on contracts to tanker in water in 2024 and nearly R16-million in 2025.

At the hearings, municipal manager Obakeng Isaacs acknowledged that spending on water trucks was "exorbitant".

He said the municipality had received complaints from communities that some water trucks were not reaching all affected streets.

Isaacs said "broken vehicles" and staffing shortages in the roads department "impedes the process of keeping roads up to standard".

The municipality also told the commission that despite having 480 permanent employees, it lacked skilled staff in critical positions.

Failing sanitation

After visiting the municipality in June, then DWS deputy minister Seitlholo raised the alarm over deteriorating wastewater treatment plants. He said the municipality "failed to implement adequate measures to prevent persistent sewage overflows from manholes, dysfunctional pump stations, stormwater systems and oxidation ponds".

Seitlholo said, "The continued deterioration of this infrastructure has resulted in contamination of local watercourses, posing severe public health and environmental hazards."

The municipality's Green Drop score has declined from 34% in 2013 to 13% in 2021, and hit 0% in 2024, with all four wastewater treatment works in Keimoes, Kenhardt, Vredesvallei, and Kakamas in a critical or high-risk state.

The report found the municipality had no qualified engineers, contributing "to poor system performance and reduced ability to maintain or rehabilitate infrastructure".

In the report, the department noted the municipality was "poorly prepared and unresponsive" when DWS tried to set up meetings and "very little evidence that was presented" since the municipality did no operational monitoring.

The Green Drop report noted the Kakamas Wastewater Treatment Works (WWTW) was spilling raw sewage and posed "major risks to staff and the public".

The municipality also submitted a feasibility study for the construction of new plant. The study found that wastewater is transported from towns and surrounding farms to the Kakamas oxidation ponds with municipal suction trucks, at a cost of nearly R10-million a year.

The oxidation ponds were last upgraded 40 years ago, and are "no longer able to cope with the volumes of sewage delivered to the treatment plant", DWS found.

An estimated 4.5-million litres is discharged into the oxidation ponds, ten times the volume it is designed to treat.

The overload of the Kakamas WWTW means that untreated effluent eventually ends up in the Orange River, creating a health risk.

The cost of the new WWTW is estimated at R143-million and would be funded by a regional bulk infrastructure grant.

Since the deputy minister's October visit, the municipality has submitted a corrective action plan to restore or upgrade the WWTW, according to DWS spokesperson Wisane Mavasa.

She said that since 2016, five directives were issued to Kai !Garib (the most recent in December 2025) for "poor operation or maintenance and spillages" from the Kakamas, Keimoes, Kenhardt and Vredesvallei WWTW.

Mavasa said the new Kakamas WWTW and bulk water supply projects are in the implementation stage, where designs, environmental studies, and water use applications are to be completed in December this year.

Mavasa said there has been an improvement in drinking water quality over the past six months because of refurbished infrastructure.

Drowning in debt

The Kai !Garib municipality has more than R1-billion in debt. Most is owed to Eskom, and smaller amounts to the Auditor-General of South Africa (AGSA), SARS, and pension funds.

Municipal debt tracked by the National Treasury shows that earlier in 2026 the municipality owed Eskom R986-million.

During the SAHRC hearings, municipal chief financial officer Antheniqe Beukes said the municipality had "entered into very unrealistic payment arrangements".

The municipality owes AGSA more than R25 million. AGSA says it has entered into an agreement with the municipality to pay off the debts and the municipality is complying.

Each year, the municipality is in deficit. For the financial year ending in 2025 it was R213-million, and in 2024 it was R54-million. Unauthorised, irregular and fruitless, and wasteful expenditure in 2025 was R422-million, and R788-million in 2024.

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In the latest available annual report (2023/24), the municipality acknowledged that it had been operating a deficit for five years due to "extreme cash flow constraints". This, it said, made it difficult to "honour the monthly expenditure commitments, which forces suppliers to charge interest".

On 7 May, Eskom threatened to switch off the municipality's electricity supply due to outstanding payments. The municipality then filed an urgent court application to suspend the interruption. On 18 June, the court ordered the parties to negotiate and conclude a Distribution Agency Agreement, with the National Energy Regulator of South Africa (NERSA) providing an "oversight role", according to Eskom.

Beukes told the SAHRC that the only way the municipality can get out of its debt is to increase its revenue, yet the 2025 annual financial statement shows municipal revenue was just R383-million. About R160-million of this was from service charges, which amounts to R13-million per month.

Commissioner Nomahlubi Khwinana suggested that the municipality be placed under administration because it was effectively "insolvent".

"You're going to continue to be insolvent as long as you have that amount," she said.

National Treasury recently announced it would be freezing equitable share grants to 69 municipalities, including Kai !Garib, to "instil fiscal discipline and ensure that public money is properly managed".

In February this year, finance minister Enoch Godongwana announced that badly-run municipalities will receive intervention.

Responding to GroundUp, National Treasury said, "For municipalities that are unable to implement infrastructure projects effectively, the Department of Cooperative Governance (CoGTA) will ... appoint capable implementing agents to deliver projects on the municipality's behalf."

It said municipalities will still be expected to implement "restoration plans" with support from CoGTA.

Groundup sent questions to the Kai !Garib municipality but did not receive a response.