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The South African Human Rights Commission’s investigative report into recreational water quality and wastewater infrastructure failures, tabled today, confirms that sewage pollution is a human-rights crisis threatening dignity, public health, livelihoods, tourism, and the environment.

The Democratic Alliance welcomes the Commission’s clear stance and its insistence on measurable remedial action, credible monitoring, public-risk communication, and accountability for continued non-compliance.

In Nelson Mandela Bay, the report records serious pollution pressure in the Baakens and Chatty river systems, while municipal testing found E. coli levels 772% above the recreational-water benchmark at New Brighton Beach and 180% above the benchmark at Hobie Beach. These findings require urgent source investigation, sustained monitoring, and timely public warnings when water may be unsafe.

In Buffalo City, the West Bank Wastewater Treatment Facility recorded E. coli of 616,000 per 100 ml, together with severe organic pollution and near-total oxygen depletion consistent with raw or inadequately treated wastewater, while the municipality failed to provide the monitoring and corrective-action records requested by the Commission.

The DA also notes the findings concerning Kouga and commends the DA-led Kouga municipality’s ongoing cooperation with the investigation, furnished its own monitoring data, and has accepted that significant compliance and monitoring failures.

Mayor Hattingh Bornman has committed to implementing the SAHRC’s detailed, time-bound remedial measures urgently and transparently. This is the accountable response residents should expect from every municipality.

The DA will monitor all three municipalities’ implementation of the report’s recommendations, including their respective remedial action plans, ongoing water-quality testing, improved public-risk communication, and measures to address monitoring and information gaps.

For more than a decade, the DA has documented, exposed, and escalated wastewater failures across the Eastern Cape.

In KwaMaqoma, a five-year DA campaign against sewage flowing into the Kat River culminated in Amathole District Municipality receiving a suspended R3 million fine in 2023. The conditions included repairing pump stations, improving security, monitoring effluent, and appointing an independent auditor. Three years later, compliance with those conditions must be established.

In Inxuba Yethemba, the DA’s complaint to the SAHRC over untreated sewage entering the Great Fish River resulted in an investigation and commitments from the Chris Hani District Municipality to clear blocked lines, repair damaged infrastructure, restore treatment units, and plan bulk upgrades. Those commitments must now be independently verified.

In Makana, the DA laid criminal charges and referred the wastewater crisis to the SAHRC and other authorities. The Commission subsequently found systemic water, sanitation, wastewater, and governance failures, and recommended that the Provincial Executive consider intervention under section 139(1)(c), including possible dissolution of the council.

In Koukamma, the DA laid criminal charges after documenting raw sewage flowing through Kagiso Heights and into the Krom River system. In the Enoch Mgijima area, we documented sewage flowing from the Khowa wastewater works into the Slangrivier, Xuka, and Mbashe river systems used by rural communities. These matters still require transparent outcomes and sustained remedial action.

The pattern is unmistakable. The province cannot continue treating every failed treatment works, collapsed pump station, and polluted river as an isolated emergency.

The existing interventions have plainly failed to secure sustained compliance. I will therefore write to COGTA MEC Zolile Williams requesting that he urgently convene the Provincial Municipal Infrastructure Technical Task Team and establish a dedicated Wastewater Intervention and Compliance Workstream.

This workstream must maintain a province-wide public register of failed wastewater systems, court orders, regulatory directives, SAHRC findings, responsible officials, budgets, and remedial deadlines, and report quarterly on implementation.

The structures already exist. What has been missing is transparent, coordinated enforcement to ensure that undertakings are implemented and failing municipalities face consequences.

The DA will continue to fight for the People of the Eastern Cape to have a meaningful life of dignity, hope, and where they are not forced to live in conditions that have been repeatedly deemed a gross human rights violation.

Issued by Dr Vicky Knoetze MPL - DA Shadow MEC for COGTA