Hope Flows for Joburg: Amid Bursts and Broken Pipes, Teams Push Back with Grit

Ageing pipes may be cracking under pressure, but on-the-ground crews are showing that despair isn’t the only option.

Not long ago, a friend swore off watching Carte Blanche. “Too depressing,” they said. And after this week’s segment on Joburg Water, you’d be forgiven for agreeing.

Viewers saw crumbling infrastructure, water-filled craters, and an overwhelmed system that some councillors believe has passed its breaking point. The message was bleak: Johannesburg’s water and sewer network is failing, and whole suburbs could one day become unliveable.

It’s not a baseless fear. More than 3 000km of Joburg’s water network still relies on old asbestos-concrete pipes, brittle relics from another era. When water pressure surges during emergency shutdowns, they crack and crumble like old chalk. Each burst means more leaks, more blockages, and more emergency repairs.

The picture, at first glance, looks hopeless. But on the ground, the mood is surprisingly different.

Chaos at Winnie Mandela Drive

Take the massive excavation at Winnie Mandela Drive and Argyle Avenue in Hurlingham. By Monday, the hole had grown into something resembling a scuba diving site. With nearby valves failing to contain the flow, Joburg Water had no choice but to shut off the Illovo reservoir and tower outlets, cutting supply to at least 15 suburbs.

The disruption was brutal. At peak traffic, the site was a mess, cars weaving through congestion, residents furious, and workers knee-deep in murky water.

And yet, despite the chaos, there was… energy.

A Different Story on the Ground

Crews worked with urgency, pumping water out and sizing up the damage. Contractors measured pipe sections, ordered materials, and prepared to move. The atmosphere was less “abandon all hope” and more “let’s get this done.”

It was a striking contrast to the doom painted on national television the night before. Joburg Water staff were well aware of the Carte Blanche segment and the jokes about snorkels, goggles, and fishing rods, but they didn’t seem rattled. Instead, they seemed motivated to prove a point.

By nightfall, progress was visible. Pumps hummed, measurements were taken, and there was a buzz of activity.

Between Hamlet and Dale Carnegie

If you were feeling Shakespearean, you might call the whole thing the “slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.” But as one councillor on site noted, quoting Dale Carnegie’s timeless advice “Don’t criticise, condemn or complain”—sometimes the most effective role is not barking orders but encouraging momentum.

This isn’t to downplay the seriousness of Joburg’s water woes. The network is old, the repairs are constant, and the risk of collapse is real. But acknowledging the grit of the workers tackling these crises matters too. Hope, after all, is also an essential resource.

Can Optimism Be Harnessed?

Johannesburg is no stranger to crisis fatigue. From load-shedding to potholes, many residents have learned to expect the worst. And yes, “Kenny se gat” a gaping, year-old excavation named after a former MMC, still haunts the city’s landscape.

But if you take stock of the pockets of energy, residents pushing back, councillors holding ground, and Joburg Water teams refusing to let despair define the work, there’s a case to be made that momentum is building.

And maybe that’s the real story here. Not that Joburg’s water network is crumbling (though it is), but that its people refuse to give up fixing it.

Takeaway: Joburg’s water infrastructure may be under siege, but beneath the bursts and blockages is a quiet resilience. Crews on the ground are proving that optimism, when matched with hard work, can be as vital as the pipes themselves.

{Source: The Citizen}

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