What’s really in your water? Damning report highlights how South Africa is failing

Minister of Water and Sanitation Pemmy Majodina. Picture: GovernmentZA/X Nearly half of South Africa’s wastewater treatment systems have reached critical failure, a damning new government report has revealed. When a wastewater treatment system fails, the sewage has to go somewhere.

In South Africa, it is increasingly going into the country’s rivers, wetlands and groundwater. These same sources feed drinking water systems, irrigation networks and the taps of communities that have no alternative. The Green Drop Report 2025, released by Minister of Water and Sanitation Pemmy Majodina on 31 March 2026, puts a number to what many South Africans living downstream of failing municipalities already know from smell alone.

Of the 848 wastewater treatment systems assessed for the 2023-24 municipal financial year, 396 – nearly half – are now classified as being in a critical state. That figure has risen sharply from 39% in 2022 to 47% in 2025. At the same time, systems performing at excellent or good levels have collapsed from 14% to just 8%.

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Only 14 facilities earned Green Drop certification this year, down from 22 in 2022. “This is not merely another report, a routine publication, or a compliance exercise,” Majodina said at the report’s release in Mpumalanga. “It shows us how effectively we are protecting our water resources, safeguarding public health and fulfilling our constitutional responsibility to uphold the dignity of our people.” The data says the country is failing on all three counts.

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