Melville residents to march again after 50 days without water

Residents of Melville and surrounding suburbs will take to the streets tomorrow to protest repeated water outages that have left the area without water for 50 days over an eight-month period, according to The Citizen.

Why residents are marching

The protest covers communities in the Hurst Hill 2 supply zone, including Melville, Westdene, Parktown West, Brixton, Westbury, Coronationville and Emmarentia. According to The Citizen, residents say they are tired of pretending the situation is acceptable and demand reliable water at every tap and accountability for the failures.

Organisers’ diagnosis

Protest organiser Josh Nel criticised the wider system’s fragility, saying:

“Even though this wasn’t even a water failure, it shows how badly the system handles shocks. When something goes wrong anywhere in the City of Joburg’s wider network, the Commando system feels it and it feels like there’s no real urgency about fixing that underlying fragility.”

Immediate impacts on residents and businesses

According to The Citizen, Brixton has suffered nine consecutive days without a stable supply, forcing residents to wake up at 2am to fill buckets. The Crosby reservoir dropped to 4% capacity and the Brixton water tower ran completely empty.

Local business owners described mounting costs and operational disruption.

“Melville is home to numerous Airbnbs, guesthouses, restaurants, bars and other hospitality businesses that depend on a reliable water supply to operate,”

a Melville Business Association executive said, adding that businesses have faced heavy extra costs buying emergency water and installing storage tanks and pumps.

A wellness practitioner explained how the outages affect staff and services:

“How can I physically work close to my clients knowing I have not had a shower in eight days? My business is based on physical contact.”

Infrastructure failures and repair delays

According to The Citizen, a recent power failure at Eikenhof which supplies 60% of the city’s water halted pumping and severely affected the vulnerable Commando system. Joburg Water said Eikenhof had returned to 100% pumping capacity after the outage but warned that large parts of the network remained under severe strain.

The leaking Hurst Hill 2 reservoir, described as crucial to the Commando system, is four months behind schedule due to municipal non-payment of the contractor, and completion is now delayed until 2027, The Citizen reported.

Work at the Crosby pump station stopped when the contractor walked off the job over unpaid bills. According to The Citizen, contractor Gideon Lesia of Mapitsi Civil Works said his firm had not been paid for months. Johannesburg Water then released partial payment on 7 August and agreed to a payment plan to resume operations, The Citizen said.

Community response and next steps

Residents have previously staged major protests after extended outages earlier this year. A community meeting organised by ward councillor Kyle Jacobs to question Johannesburg Water about the latest failures descended into a shouting match, with attendees condemning the absence of the city’s political leadership.

Tomorrow’s planned march follows those earlier demonstrations and renewed outages over the past two weeks that affected both water and power, according to The Citizen.