For Asanda Magadla, there is little to celebrate this Freedom Day. In Mdantsane in the Eastern Cape, where she lives, taps frequently run dry — or deliver water so contaminated that it cannot be used.
At times, she said, it was laced with sewage, forcing households like hers to spend what little they have on buying water to survive.
“Instead of reducing inequalities in our society, the water crisis has made it even worse because we have to find alternative ways of accessing water,” said Magadla, an activist with the Uthando Lwendalo Environmental Movement and a coordinator for WaterCAN in the Eastern Cape.
More than three decades into democracy, the promise of dignity and basic services remains out of reach for many South Africans. Across provinces, communities describe a daily struggle for safe, reliable water — one that is deepening inequality, fuelling frustration and in some cases, sparking conflict.
In Magadla’s household of 15 people, water has become an additional monthly expense rather than a guaranteed service.
“We have to budget for water as an extra item, while already paying for municipal services.”
Similar experiences are reported in the Free State, where activists working with the Catholic Justice and Peace Commission say communities face persistent contamination and unreliable supply.
In February, more than 100 families in Marakong village in QwaQwa faced a serious public health emergency after live bloodworms were reported and confirmed in water flowing from household taps, water watchdog, WaterCAN, said.
Water activist Tabi Moloi, the coordinator for the Catholic Justice and Peace in QwaQwa, said samples were taken but results had yet to be shared by authorities. “When water is not provided, we don’t enjoy the freedom of being citizens of that area.”
In the absence of reliable supply, many households rely on water tankers, which often arrive late or are forced to collect water from wells and mountain sources, some contaminated by sewage spillages.
Moloi said the issue was not always scarcity but delivery.
“There is plenty of water in our areas because we have three dams that are able to supply our area. The challenge is the infrastructure and the political interference.”
Both activists point to failing infrastructure, lack of technical capacity and corruption.
“Water treatment plants are being vandalised because of tender mafias,” Magadla said.
The consequences are glaring — from illness linked to contaminated water to disruptions in schooling.
In some cases, frustration has boiled over into protest. In the Free State, some communities have burnt JoJo tanks. In the Eastern Cape, activists are preparing for further demonstrations, including a planned march in Makhanda, over the installation of prepaid smart water meters, next week.
Makhanda’s water crisis is a long-running failure of ageing infrastructure and repeated breakdowns that has left residents facing chronic shortages and unsafe supply.
Dr Henk Boshoff, a commissioner at the South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC), said the gains made since 1994 in expanding access to water could not be ignored.
He pointed to national data showing that access has improved over time. The General Household Survey of 2024 indicates that 87.7% of households now have access to piped or tap water, compared with 84.4% in 2002.
But the progress masked a worsening crisis in service delivery. “However, these gains are overshadowed by significant challenges the country faces regarding access to quality and reliable supply of water for many people in the country,” he said.
Boshoff added that the water crisis had reached such severity that the government had acknowledged it at the highest level, through President Cyril Ramaphosa’s establishment of a national water crisis committee.
He described water as central to the realisation of multiple constitutional rights.
“Water is the lifeblood of human existence and plays a crucial role in the attainment of several human rights, such as healthcare, children’s rights, human dignity and education.”
Yet the lived reality for many households told a different story.
According to the commission’s findings, access was often inadequate, unreliable or unsafe — a situation that was not confined to isolated areas. “The water crisis is not a localised phenomenon but is widespread, affecting and disrupting the lives of several households in the country,” he said.
“Hence, as the SAHRC, we have called for the water crisis to be declared a national disaster.”
Against this backdrop, Boshoff is unequivocal that the country’s water situation falls short of the democratic promise marked by Freedom Day.
“Access to water in South Africa currently does not reflect the promise of freedom,” he said. “The dream of freedom remains an illusory one as a significant proportion of our population continues to lack access to clean, sufficient and reliable water.”
There could be no meaningful freedom where basic dignity was undermined. “There can be no freedom if people still must suffer the indignity of having to go for days or months without access to water.”
He also highlighted the gendered burden of water insecurity, particularly in rural and poor communities. “There can be no freedom if women and girls must be the ‘bearers of water’, saddled with the task of fetching water, often in precarious conditions exposing them to health hazards and risks of violence.”
The impact, he said, extended into education, public health and safety — and raised deeper questions about inequality in access.
“There can be no freedom if some households must drink unsafe water which is contaminated because a municipality is failing to deliver on its constitutional and statutory obligations.”
Boshoff warned against the commodification of water, arguing that access should not depend on wealth.
“Where is freedom, where is the dignity where water now risks being commodified with access to clean water depending on the power of the purse?”
He further raised concern about corruption and illicit control within parts of the system.
“We cannot talk about freedom where water — a public good — has been captured by the water mafias who have turned water into a profit-making scheme.”
At what point, then, does water insecurity move beyond service delivery failure and become a systemic human rights violation?
For Boshoff, the answer lies in the Constitution.
“The starting point is to understand that the right to have access to sufficient water is a fundamental human right enshrined in the Bill of Rights in the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, 1996.”
When that right is not realised the consequences are immediate and severe. “When people are deprived of water for days on end, it is already a violation of the right to have access to sufficient water.
“The lack of access to water imperils human dignity and punctures the constitutional vision of undoing the injustices of the past and forging a transformed society founded on human dignity and equality.”
He argued that service delivery failures could not be treated as administrative glitches.
“When municipalities fail to deliver ‘services’, such as water, it is not just another administrative mishap. It has real-life consequences. Municipalities are the vehicles through which human rights are realised and attained.”
What was required was a shift in thinking — away from viewing service delivery as technical administration and towards recognising it as a constitutional obligation.
“We need to inculcate that mindset-shift, to ensure that service delivery is not merely viewed as a tick-box process but as part of the advancement of the constitutional project of restoring dignity and transforming lives.”
Ultimately, he said, water insecurity struck at the core of human rights. “Water insecurity violates human rights in all aspects. It undermines human dignity and threatens the right to life as people cannot survive without access to water.”
For activists on the ground, the constitutional principles are experienced in daily routines shaped by scarcity and uncertainty.
“Many people are still struggling with access,” said Nomsa Daele, WaterCAN’s citizen science and training coordinator. “In Limpopo, people don’t have water; and where they do, it is often contaminated.
The crisis was generational. In some areas of Limpopo, she said, young people had never experienced running water at home.
At rural schools in KwaZulu-Natal, pupils were asked to ferry water from home and walk long distances to school. “That is not the freedom our parents imagined,” she said.
For Magadla, Freedom Day feels increasingly hollow.
“We are still buying water, budgeting for water and fighting for it,” she said. “And it feels like that has become normal.”
She added that the crisis reflected deeper inequality.
“If you are poor, you are made to feel you deserve this. But water is life and no one should be left behind.”
Across South Africa, communities are marking Freedom Day under the weight of an escalating water crisis, where unreliable supply, contamination and ageing infrastructure continue to undermine basic rights and deepen inequality