South Africa’s water networks face escalating sabotage by criminal syndicates known as ‘water mafias’. By destroying infrastructure and exploiting tanker contracts, they profit from people’s desperation while deepening inequality. What began as vandalism has become a crisis of governance, corruption and violence, threatening the nation’s water security and human rights.

For the South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC), an institution that safeguards the country against human rights abuses and threats, the rise of organised crime centred around critical infrastructure goes beyond “operational challenges.”

Dr Henk Boshoff, SAHRC commissioner, says, “This has become a crisis of governance, a crisis of ethics and a crisis of enforcement of laws, If left unchecked, the trajectory could create a full-tier system: clean water for the wealthy without interruption, and hazardous, overpriced tanker water, often unsafe, for the poor.”

The SAHRC released a policy document that covers water sabotage and how to address this systematic attack on essential infrastructure.

The document states that there are three distinct patterns associated with water infrastructure sabotage, outlining each with a corresponding case study.

1. Property damage

The Tsojane bulk pipeline in the Chris Hani Municipality in Butterworth, Eastern Cape, was attacked on multiple occasions in August 2023. This caused major leaks and recurring water outages affecting 40 villages. In a similar case, parts of eThekwini in KwaZulu-Natal were left without water for eight days in September 2023 following incidents of vandalism. Investigation into these incidents showed an underlying pattern, and the SAHRC notes that in some places, like the Free State, this pattern is even more evident as bulk infrastructure is destroyed days after repair.

2. Bodily harm and murder

The SAHRC has collected reports that show physical violence as a means of vandalism. Between 2022 and 2023, eight water service employees were murdered in the eThekwini municipality. Municipal officials and security officers were held at gunpoint and tortured during a copper cable heist in 2024. Employees have compared working in eThekwini to working in a warzone, with another employee killed while attending to a reservoir in December 2024. In October 2024, ten attackers held four security guards hostage at gunpoint at the Temba Wastewater Treatment Plant in Tshwane. The attackers vandalised the plant.

3. Organised crime and corruption

These attacks and sabotages are not randomised or opportunistic. They form part of a larger pattern of organised crime that seeks to take advantage of and weaken the state for financial gain. In times of water supply disruption, municipalities use tankers as a measure to provide water to affected residents. SAHRC notes that this is the exploited mechanism utilised by the ‘water mafia’ or ‘water tanker mafia’. These mafias induce water crises, and provide information to other crime networks to create a necessary climate for water tankers, owned by the criminal networks, to exploit people in need of water. It is alleged that these water tanker mafias work with corrupt municipal officials. This has led to an entire sub-water economy costing the fiscus billions of funds that could be directed elsewhere. The City of Tshwane spends R98 million a year on tankers. Gauteng spent R2.3 billion on water tankers between 2018 and 2023.

These water mafias also abstract from rivers and dams, bypassing all protocol, leading to serious health risks. The Hammanskraal cholera outbreak was linked to the water quality of these tankers.

Commissioner Boshoff explains that the emergence of these mafias is linked to ailing infrastructure and unstable municipal governance. “Municipalities and water service authorities lack the necessary skills, coupled with decaying infrastructure, high water losses, bad fiscal management, and an existential debt crisis. This is the backdrop on which these mafias are active, taking advantage of the problems already facing South Africa.”

Inside man

Dr Ferrial Adam, executive director of WaterCAN, a network of citizen science activists, explains, “Sabotage is a symptom of corruption, and while we focus on public sector corruption, it is necessary to link the private sector’s corruption to get a broader picture.” While municipal and local governments are the institutions that enable the sabotage, it is private companies and individuals that benefit.

Dr Adams explains that the private sector water tankers are contracted by municipalities, and this creates a vested interest in sabotage. The more the tankers are needed, the more sabotage is done to create demand. The link between the municipality and the tankers is built on corruption.

The scale of the problem is difficult to note, but Dr Adam suggests a link between euphemistically named ‘Municipal Business Forums’ and the growing crime around water infrastructure.

This link between public and private sectors through corruption is known, but Dr Adam says,

“We need to look at what’s happening on the ground to truly understand the problem. These mafias are gaining from exploiting the most vulnerable people in society. On a grassroots level, I’ve heard stories about people using their SASSA grants for water, and these people are scared to report the issue for fear that the tankers will disappear, leaving them without any water.”

On a wider scale, 45% of government clinics do not have clean water, and 26% of schools do not have clean water. Dr Adam notes that in some cases, ‘water’ is on stationery lists. The mafia problem is often quantified in rands spent, but Dr Adam points out that the real cost is humanity and hope. “People are unable to celebrate birthdays, get married, enjoy leisure time, because there is no water or the money they have goes toward the water mafia. There is an infrastructure cost, but there is also a social cost.”

Adding to actually quantifying the scale and impact, Professor Tracey-Lynn Field, professor of Law at Wits School of Law and lead investigator for the South African Water Justice Tracker, says, “Since 2022, we have embarked on the South African Water Justice Tracker project alongside the SAHRC, which maps indicators towards realising the right to water for all in South Africa.”

She says that a lot of data is focused on large metros, but this tracker allows for data collection in rural and smaller areas in South Africa. The project is large, and water theft is only a part of the data collected, but this data illuminates the scale and real impacts of this rise in organised crime.“We engaged with all nine provinces, and what we saw was that those attending these engagements were not just politicians but the technical people working and managing the water infrastructure. This gave us valuable insight into the real on-the-ground

scenarios and concerns from a practical level,” says Prof Field. The data gathered from speaking to the technical operators shows that there are three distinct problems, only one of which is the water mafia. “When we speak of sabotage, we must also include theft of electrical infrastructure, and the theft and vandalism of water service infrastructure like borehole pumps and illegal connections.” These issues only compound and worsen the ongoing water woes in South Africa and further prop up the conditions that lead to the water mafia.

She recalls some extreme examples of water mafia practices to expand on the scale and tactics, “In Merafong, a Limpopo municipality, illegal miners known as zama-zamas stripped a water treatment works and created their own supply network.” The data and dialogue gathered also showed that 90% of all vandalism arises from coalisions within the municipality.

The data gathered through the Water Justice Tracker pinpoints exact drivers behind some of the crimes, which include poverty and drug addiction; these systemic issues give organised crime desperate hands to work with. In electrical cable theft cases, the driver is the scrap metal trade coupled with these systematic issues, which give people in poverty access to money.

How to take on a mafia

Dr Adam suggests transparency as the first step in solving the problem. If all transactions, stakeholders, and connections are made visible, the margin for being able to commit a crime without oversight decreases substantially. Adding accountability to transparency is a key focus, too. She says, “This is a serious crime, we need to see people held accountable from both spaces government and the private sector. We cannot allow those who are found guilty to shift around. If a business is found guilty in Gauteng, then it can’t win contracts anywhere else. We need to give people their hope back by being active citizens. People on the ground are most affected but are often forgotten; it is they who face the issues who know what is going on, and involving the community will go a long way.”

A feature of South Africa’s water infrastructure is that it is vast, as Prof Field notes, Rand Water alone has a pipeline network of 3000 plus kilometres. This dispersed network makes for a difficult task to tackle.

Here, Prof Field concurs with Dr Adams and says, “The sheer size of the network means we have to rely on communities to be eyes and ears on the ground.” She also adds that due to the underlying systemic issues, poverty and drug addiction, there should be broader social reform that directly addresses the cause of crime.

What the law has to say

Dr Johandri Wrighter, a postdoctoral researcher, speaks to how the law can address these criminal undertakings, “If we look at the definition of terrorism as defined under the Protection of Constitutional Democracy Against Terrorist Activities Act 33 of 2004, the organised criminal element of these attacks, the water mafias that sabotage the infrastructure could be called terrorists.”

She does clarify that this is not the smaller opportunistic crimes but the specific organised criminal element who have infiltrated the government, tortured and murdered people in pursuit of profit. Dr Wright does explain that using this act must be done in good faith, because of South Africa’s pre-1994 history of misusing the terrorist act. “For South Africa, this legislation is complex and time-consuming, and the vague, broad nature of the act makes it difficult to convict under this act,” says Prof Field.

Using the Terror Act also means that South Africa would have to report to the United Nations, which could affect the standing of South Africa economically and discourage investment, but Dr Wright explains that using the act to classify some of these crimes as acts of terror could deter criminals due to the severity of the punishment.

Another avenue is using the Criminal Matters Amendment Act 18 of 2015, which Dr Wright explains is “The criminalising of tampering with, damaging, or destruction of vital systems that deliver basic services like water and sanitation. This is a good narrow definition, which means less for the defences to argue against, and it specifically targets this offence and carries a 30-year imprisonment or R100 million fine.” This act means you can prosecute companies involved, targeting the private sector part of the equation.

There is also the upcoming Critical Infrastructure Protection Act, where certain infrastructure, like property and equipment, is designated as critical for the functioning of society, and any unlawful damage to the infrastructure carries heavy penalties that outweigh normal vandalism charges. Dr Wright notes that many of the country’s water works are not listed.

Dr Wright does say, “The issue with the legal response now is that it is reactive and does not prevent the crime.”