- Rand Water spent R64.7m on ads—76% of all water board spending.
- Ads are misleading, promoting old projects as new.
- DA calls for funds to go to water infrastructure, not marketing.
The Democratic Alliance is demanding urgent answers after parliamentary replies revealed that Rand Water has spent an astonishing R64.7 million on advertising over the past three years.
This means Rand Water alone accounts for 76% of the combined R83 million spent by all seven water boards in South Africa — by far the highest in the country.
This advertising binge is wasteful and disingenuous. Just today, Rand Water ran a front-page newspaper advert celebrating the Zuikerbosch System 5A purification plant and its “unveiling” by President Cyril Ramaphosa and Minister Pemmy Majodina. Yet this plant has already been operating since 2023. This is image-polishing, not progress.
For residents across Gauteng, many of whom go days or even weeks without water due to municipal failures, these glossy adverts are unnecessary and insulting. Households are struggling to secure basic water while millions are being spent on brand promotion for an entity that does not compete for customers.
Rand Water is among the best-run water boards in South Africa, and one of the better-performing state-owned entities overall. Its operational expertise and bulk supply performance are not in dispute.
But precisely because Rand Water is relatively well run, it is indefensible that it chooses to divert scarce public funds into marketing campaigns targeted at residents, who are not, and cannot be, its customers. Rand Water is a bulk water utility. It does not supply households and it does not operate in a competitive market. Its customers are municipalities.
What Gauteng needs is investment in system resilience, not full-page adverts. Every rand should be directed towards:
- Supporting municipalities to stabilise local reticulation;
- Reducing system losses and improving pressure management;
- Strengthening telemetry, monitoring, and real-time oversight; and
- Ensuring long-term infrastructure reliability and water security.
South Africans deserve transparency and responsible spending – not multimillion-rand campaigns designed to score political points or create misleading impressions of “new” achievements.
The DA will continue to press for accountability and for the redirection of public money away from self-promotion and into the infrastructure and support that communities desperately need.