Water supply problems in Johannesburg, South Africa’s economic and trade hub, have drawn the attention of the national minister of water and sanitation. In November, minister Pemmy Majodina announced a plan of action, which included ‘throttling the water supply’ at high-consumption reservoirs, using smart flow controllers to stabilise the system.

This limiting officially began on 14 November, but Joburg Water, the city’s water utility, appears to have already been implementing shutdowns, referring to it as ‘switching off systems’. Throttling measures and shutdowns are intended to allow reservoirs to refill.

According to data collected from Joburg Water’s media releases in October and November 2024, the Brixton and Hursthill 2 reservoirs, part of the Commondo system, were turned off overnight on 1 October to ‘help build capacity’. Then Joburg Water began closing the Sandton meters, affecting Bryanston, Illovo, Linbro Park, Marlboro and Morningside, to ’ensure equal water supply distribution to struggling systems’.