Please see attached video by Haniff Hoosen at a water crisis picket at Pinetown Water and Sanitation Depo on 10 September 2026.
I call on eThekwini Mayor Cyril Xaba to suspend the failing Executive Director for the Technical Services Department, Ednick Msweli with immediate effect.
Msweli was appointed to this role in November 2025, having previously served in senior positions, including as Director of Water and Sanitation Services and Deputy Head of eThekwini Water and Sanitation.
Yet under this leadership, residents are forced to endure more than 13,000 active water leaks throughout the city, while more than 65% of the municipality’s water is being lost.
Millions of litres of clean drinking water escaping into the ground, streets and drains, while residents are being told there isn’t enough water to supply their homes.
The municipality’s own history shows that its current approach is simply not working.
In April 2023, eThekwini introduced a so-called Water Turnaround Strategy. At the time, water losses were already around 58%. Forty months later, water losses have increased to more than 65%. So we have to ask: what exactly has been turned around when the water crisis is getting worse?
This is an emergency that requires an urgent and immediate response. You cannot pay millions of rands to a Director while the department under their responsibility continues to fail residents on this scale.
Yesterday, I launched our Water Recovery Plan for eThekwini in a decisive move aimed at restoring water to Durban’s taps and ending the city’s reliance on costly, unsustainable water tanker contracts.
The DA’s plan is not a theory-based exercise; it is a practical roadmap built on accountability, investment, and action.
The 10-Point Water Recovery Plan sets out clear steps:
- Invest R7 billion to rebuild the water network, prioritising pipe replacement and rehabilitation.
- Protect water revenue by ring fencing funds and ending cross subsidisation.
- Put performance on the scoreboard with measurable targets and consequences for failure.
- Learn from success by partnering with municipalities that have reduced water losses.
- Bring in private sector expertise to supplement municipal capacity.
- Investigate the water mafia and root out corruption in procurement and tanker operations.
- Reinvest every saving from reduced losses directly back into infrastructure.
- Recruit technical skills to professionalise the department.
- Build rapid response teams with adequate equipment and staffing.
- Use technology for early leak detection, smart metering, and predictive maintenance.
Mayor Xaba must act. He must stop protecting officials who have failed and start protecting the residents who pay their salaries. The DA will continue to demand accountability, expose waste and corruption, and put forward practical solutions to fix eThekwini’s water crisis. eThekwini needs taps, not tankers — and it needs leadership that will make it happen.