Nearly half of every litre of treated water South Africa produces never reaches a paying customer, and the bill for that waste now runs to about R26 billion a year.
The figure was put on the record by Water and Sanitation Minister Pemmy Majodina during a parliamentary question-and-answer session, where she set out the scale of the country's non-revenue water problem and the steps government is taking to stem it.
Where the money goes
Non-revenue water covers everything a municipality supplies but earns nothing for: water lost to leaking and bursting pipes, illegal connections, and volumes that are delivered but never billed because of weak metering and collection. Majodina said the national average now sits at 47.3%, equivalent to more than 2.1 billion kilolitres each year. At an average supply cost of R12.41 per kilolitre, that works out to roughly R26 billion in lost value annually, well above the global benchmark of around 30%.
The losses compound an already strained system. According to Stats SA's General Household Survey, 56.8% of households experienced water interruptions, with more than a third reporting outages that lasted several days.
Infrastructure under strain
The 2025 Green Drop report found 396 of 848 wastewater treatment works in a critical state, while the share of systems rated good or excellent slipped from 14% to just 8% over three years. Ageing municipal networks are the chief culprit, with treated water escaping above and below ground before it can be measured or charged for.
Majodina pointed to a national training programme, Treasury-led reforms and a growing pipeline of private-sector partnerships as the route out. The Water Partnerships Office has assembled a non-revenue water project pipeline worth around R4.5 billion, targeting savings of more than 70 million kilolitres and potential additional municipal revenue of about R736 million a year. A full No Drop assessment is due to be published in March 2027.
