A second power outage, this time impacting Rand Water’s Vereeniging water treatment plant, in the Emfuleni local municipality, led Water and Sanitation Minister Pemmy Majodina and Deputy Minister David Mahlobo to convene another urgent meeting on Monday evening.

The Department of Water and Sanitation (DWS) aimed to obtain a detailed update on the recent electricity supply interruptions and their impact on Rand Water’s water supply systems, as well as identify solutions to the challenge that is resulting in intermittent water supply disruptions.

The meeting included representatives from Rand Water, the Gauteng provincial government, Emfuleni local municipality, the City of Johannesburg and its entities – City Power and Johannesburg Water – and State-owned power utility Eskom.

This followed increasing electricity supply disruptions that have affected Rand Water’s water supply systems.

On September 7, 2026, an electrical fault occurred at the Fordsburg City Power substation, which affected pumping at Rand Water’s Eikenhof pump station, while an Eskom power line supplying Rand Water’s Vereeniging facility was damaged on September 13, 2026, by a contractor working for the Emfuleni local municipality.

As a result, pumping at Eikenhof, Zwartkoppies and Vereeniging was reduced, severely affecting water supply systems in the Emfuleni local municipality, the City of Johannesburg, West Rand municipalities, Madibeng and Rustenburg.

The Vereeniging water treatment works and pumping facility pumps treat water for Rand Water’s Zwartkoppies, Eikenhof and Palmiet pumping stations.

The Zwartkoppies pumping station provides water to the City of Johannesburg and parts of Ekurhuleni.

The Eikenhof pumping station also provides water to the City of Johannesburg, including Soweto, Roodepoort and Sandton, as well as municipalities in the West Rand and parts of the North West province.

The Vereeniging facility is supplied with electricity by Emfuleni local municipality and the Eikenhof pump station is supplied with electricity by City Power.

While repairs in both instances were carried out within hours, once Rand Water’s treatment and pumping facilities stop working owing to electricity supply outages, it takes about six hours for the systems to be fully restarted to pump water at full capacity.

The water levels in Rand Water’s reservoirs take more time to recover before normal supply levels to the municipalities returns to normal. Once municipal reservoirs become depleted, it can take weeks for the water levels in the reservoirs to recover, particularly if water demand remains high and if the municipalities have insufficient storage and pumping capacity in their municipal water distribution systems.

Municipal reservoir levels are still recovering in some areas.

“The problem is not that there is not enough electricity, the problem is that the maintenance of the municipal electricity distribution networks needs to be improved and the distribution systems need to be strengthened, for example through the construction of booster substations and electricity ring-feeds,” the statement, issued on Tuesday evening, indicated.

The meeting agreed on several measures and interventions to increase electricity supply capacity, introduce greater supply redundancy and provide alternative electricity supply sources to Rand Water’s treatment works and pumping stations, with expectations that this will reduce the risk and impact of future outages and improve the reliability of electricity supply to water infrastructure.

City Power has implemented additional monitoring, inspection, and preventative measures to address increased electricity outages which have resulted from a combination of equipment and network faults.

The utility will also fast-track the completion of the upgrading of the Eikenhof electricity substation and Mondeor HV Switchyard project, in addition to measures to increase its transformer redundancy, in an effort to strengthen its distribution network.

City Power noted that it has teams with sufficient stocks and other resources in place which are able to respond to any electricity outages immediately.

Meanwhile, Eskom has deployed a dedicated technical team to assist the Emfuleni local municipality to improve the maintenance and operation of its electricity distribution network, in terms of the parties’ Distribution Agency Agreement, as well as provide mobile substations to Rand Water to assist the water utility where possible to establish a back-up electricity supply.

Rand Water will continue investing in additional alternative complementary electricity sources where feasible.

Several institutional mechanisms have been put in place to ensure a coordinated approach to resolving these issues.

On behalf of Gauteng Premier Panyaza Lesufi, Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs MEC Jacob Mamobolo is chairing a weekly intergovernmental coordination meeting, which includes reviewing updates on electricity and water supply issues in the province.

Further, a joint technical working committee has been established, led by the DWS, with participation of representatives from the Gauteng Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs Department, Rand Water, the Emfuleni local municipality, Johannesburg Water, City Power and Eskom, to identify solutions to ensure that Rand Water is reliably supplied with electricity.

Ongoing meetings will be held to monitor progress and to develop risk mitigation plans which will be presented to the Ministers, Premier and mayors.