- Water purification infrastructure in Kai !Garib municipality in the Northern Cape has been failing, due to ageing infrastructure, lack of staff and financial troubles.
- The area has consequently had frequent water disruptions and dirty tap water.
- The Department of Water and Sanitation has stepped in to help, and is considering legal action against the municipality for failing to comply with a 2022 directive.
For nearly ten years, communities in the Kai !Garib region of the Northern Cape have been plagued by frequent water shortages and dirty tap water as infrastructure crumbles.
Three of the region’s largest towns are Kakamas, Keimoes and Kenhardt. It is also the location of the Augrabies Falls National Park. The area is semi-arid, on the banks of the Orange River, where the municipality extracts water. However, the municipality has failed to fix its water purification infrastructure because of financial troubles.
The Department of Water and Sanitation (DWS) publishes occasional assessments on drinking water quality and water infrastructure in municipalities across the country.
Over the past few years, the department conducted “numerous investigations” of the municipality and the Kakamas Water Treatment Works (WTW). The department issued a directive in 2022 for the municipality to improve its water quality and for the municipality to timeously advise its residents when the water is not safe for drinking.
In 2023 Kai !Garib’s Blue Drop Score dropped from 71% in 2014 to just 16%. This is far below the “critical risk” target of 31%. All 16 of its water supply systems had high or critical risk ratings.
The Department has since intervened in the crisis.
DWS Director-General Sean Phillips, in a letter in May, attributed the municipality’s regular water supply shortages to staffing issues, failing infrastructure, and financial troubles.
“There has been little to no response from the Kai !Garib local municipality… The department is therefore considering legal action in this regard,” wrote Phillips.
According to the municipality’s 2022/2023 annual report, the water purification systems can’t meet the growing demand of the towns.
“The Water Treatment Plant in Kakamas is of such a nature that it may fail at any time and this will have devastating effects on the community and the municipality,” the report read, adding that the plant was beyond its lifespan.
The municipality acknowledged that despite the water treatment plants running at full capacity, “all of the settlements within the municipality still have limited or no access to clean drinking water”.
Kakamas community leader Leonard Mckay told GroundUp that in recent months, several towns have frequently had no running water. And when the water does run, it appears to be brown and dirty.
Mckay said he has tried to raise the community’s concerns about the water crisis to the department and the Human Rights Commission.
Maintenance failures
In 2022, a municipal technical report indicated that the last upgrade to the Kakamas plant was in 1987. Building, mechanical equipment, and dosing equipment is “in a very poor condition”, the report stated. Chlorine dosing is “done by hand” and there is “urgent repair work needed”.
When GroundUp visited the plant at the end of 2024, the building was falling into disrepair and the chlorine had run out.
The department funded nearly R13-million, through the Water Supply Infrastructure Grant (WSIG), for emergency repairs to the Kakamas WTW. But the department has admitted delays to the project because the municipality had used the funding “for operational purposes”. (It’s unclear what this means.)
Department spokesperson Wisane Mavasa told GroundUp that funding will be prioritised to complete the WTW in this financial year.
In their annual report, the municipality notes that a feasibility study calculated the cost of a new plant would be about R80-million.
The Department estimates that the project to upgrade water infrastructure in Kakamas, Alheit, Marchand, Augrabies, Lutzburg, Cillie, and Riemvasmaak will cost over R300-million.
In the meanwhile, drinking water quality issues will continue until the water projects are completed, said the DWS.
Kai !Garib also returned unspent R13.9-million allocated via a municipal infrastructure grant to the National Treasury at the end June 2024, according to audited financial statements.
The problem is not unique to Kai !Garib and it is widespread across the Northern Cape. In a recent parliamentary response, Minister of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs Velenkosini Hlabisa said he was “aware that Northern Cape municipalities have been struggling to spend their municipal infrastructure grant allocations and that some have used their conditional grants to pay operational expenses”.
The minister said that Northern Cape municipalities struggled to spend their grants due to “failure to procure services on time”, using conditional grants for operational expenses, poor planning, and failure to appoint competent managers.
The Kai !Garib municipality didn’t respond to GroundUp’s repeated requests for comment. We also reached out to the ZF Mgcawu District Municipality who committed to respond but did not by the time of publication.
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The barkeep and the Englishman both look at the terrified bedraggled sight before them, and try to calm him down, but he\’s completely inconsolable. They give him water and finally manage to get a word out of him but he struggles free from their grasp and run away screaming.
A few minutes later the same thing happens with a whole group of men running in and screaming, he\’s coming, he\’s coming the barkeep grabs hold of one of the men as he tries to sprint past the bar and tries to get information out of him, again no response other than terrified gibberish.
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They look out of the window and off in the distance they see a tornado coming towards the bar, at the bottom of the tornado they see the hugest beast of a man they have ever seen, as he gets closer they spot that he is riding a rhinocerous and using a crocodile as a riding whip, with each smack of the crocodile across the back of the rhino the louder is screams and the faster it runs, the tornado following it getting ever larger.
The 2 look at each other and start to fortify their position, they\’ve got a gun and they\’re waaay to drunk to run, so they start piling bar stool and tables and anything they can get their hands on to make sure they\’ll be safe when he arrives. They\’re not gonna make it, they can see the man slowing down his rhino, by now the crocodile is nothing but reptile paste on the bruised rump of the half dead rhino, the rhino drops down dead from exhaustion and crashes to the ground right outside the bar the tornado loses it\’s last breath in a cloud of dust as the huge man crashes his way through the make shift barricade and charges up towards the bar where the 2 men have taken shelter, he grabs a bottle of the hardest liquor on the shelf and down the entire litre in 1 gulp, he peers over the bar sobbing and sees the 2 defenders cowering down behind the crates of beer, they look up at the mans\’ face and he stares at them with a look of complete and utter hopelessness, he stares at them for a half second and half screams, half sobs, \”Oh my god what are you still doing here!!! WE HAVE TO GET OUT OF HERE NOW!!!! Vernon Koekemoer is coming!!!!\”