The Democratic Alliance (DA) has formally filed court papers in the South Gauteng High Court against the City of Johannesburg, Joburg Water, and executive mayor Dada Morero.
The party said this legal action follows years of accelerated infrastructure collapse, lack of maintenance, chronic water outages, and the failure to act with the urgency required to protect residents and businesses.
The court application makes it clear that the crisis facing Johannesburg is not the result of an unavoidable disaster.
But rather, it is a direct consequence of political failure, poor governance, and deliberate inaction by the mayor, his mayoral committee, and the administration.
Speaking in an interview with 702 Drive, DA Johannesburg mayoral candidate Helen Zille said one of the most critical issues is the city’s failures in water management.
She said the party is asking the court to compel the city and Joburg Water to implement the municipality’s own water turnaround strategy, which was adopted in 2024 but has not been acted on.
Zille explained that the party is not asking for a new policy to be created, but rather for the city to carry out the strategy it has already adopted.
“What we’re asking the court to do is to order Joburg to implement its own water turnaround strategy,” she said.
“Money has not been allocated for it, and it hasn’t been implemented, certainly not with any urgency or direction,” she said.
She added that Joburg Water is currently struggling financially and is unable to meet obligations to contractors and suppliers.
“So for the ongoing projects that it has, which are nowhere near the scale of the water turnaround strategy, it’s not even able to pay its suppliers.”
According to Zille, the DA wants the court to direct Joburg Water to implement the adopted policy and ensure that funding collected for water services is protected and used for infrastructure maintenance.
“What we’re asking the court to do is to instruct Joburg Water to implement its own policy that was adopted in 2024 and budget for it,” she said.
“In other words, to ring fence the funding that comes in for water and use it for water maintenance and infrastructure.”
Zille also referenced comments made by Joburg Water itself about the dire state of the system.
Financial woes
Quoting the utility’s own assessment, she said Joburg Water had acknowledged that its “water sanitation service is experiencing serious challenges and is not sustainable”.
Despite concerns that court intervention alone could not reverse the decline, Zille argued that the city’s problems are solvable if the right priorities are followed.
She said the city first needs to repair its billing system to ensure consumers receive accurate accounts and pay correctly for water usage.
She also called for Johannesburg to join the presidency-backed utilities reform project, which she said offers incentives for ring-fencing revenue from water, electricity, and other trading services.
In addition, Zille said there is an opportunity for public-private partnerships to inject investment into the city’s water infrastructure.
“There is a big opportunity to do a public-private partnership in the provision of water, which could inject a huge amount of money into the system,” she said.
However, she acknowledged that some of these measures would ultimately depend on political decisions and future election outcomes.
BusinessTech has asked the City of Johannesburg (CoJ) for its response to the court filing and the accusations laid against it. Any response from the CoJ will be added to the article once it is received.
