As South Africa observes National Water Month in March, the nation’s relationship with water security has never been in sharper focus. As Cape Town stares down a potential supply shortage as dam levels drop, Gauteng has suffered severe outages, leading to dry taps and subsequent civil unrest. The situation has prompted action from all spheres of government, including a R760 million investment by the City of Johannesburg to upgrade its infrastructure and an authorisation for Rand Water to abstract additional water from the Integrated Vaal River System (IVRS).
While this a step in the right direction, Gauteng’s water woes are multi-faceted and the result of several factors and shortcomings. But what is straightforward is how all stakeholders need to respond. Water security is a shared responsibility. It demands a change in mindset and commitment from both individuals and organisations, whether it’s a person walking past a dripping tap and shutting it off, or a business monitoring their consumption and installing water-saving solutions.
With each behavioural change or intervention, we work to not only resolve the water crisis in the medium-to-long term but also go from a reactive to a proactive stance towards how we supply, use and save this important resource.
A shared problem requires a shared solution
While it is easy to write off unreliable water supply and infrastructure decay in Gauteng as a politically driven issue, the situation is the result of a conflux of circumstances. Johannesburg is one of the world’s largest cities not built close to a natural water source. It is also high lying and sits atop a watershed, requiring water to be pumped hundreds of metres above its primary source, the Vaal Dam. Joburg itself is also an economic powerhouse and home to around 16.1 million people, around a quarter of the country’s entire population.
As a result, the challenge of addressing complex infrastructure problems is compounded by the need to expand said infrastructure to meet the present and future needs of people, businesses, and the economy. Nearly half of Johannesburg’s water is non-revenue water, lost to pipe leaks, bursts and illegal connections, with 72% of that amount attributed to inadequate investment in infrastructure and a lack of corrective action. Failing to address this comes at the cost of the city’s economic stagnation, which South Africa cannot afford to continue.
While a turnaround strategy is being spearheaded by government, South Africans have a shared responsibility to invest in water efficiency, supply resilience, and live and work in a way that eases pressures on municipal systems. For the private sector, that means prioritising water security and resource management as part of enterprises’ growth strategies and ESG frameworks. By making a commitment at that level, and institutionalising optimised water consumption and efficiency, businesses serve as responsible corporate citizens and play their part in addressing the greater challenge.
Taking control: Smart monitoring leads to smart usage
For property owners, monitoring water use and managing consumption patterns can be an immediate and cost-effective intervention. While Gauteng’s water crisis is partly systemic and thus beyond the control of private operators, operators still have the power to make changes.
Businesses and property owners can lower their demand through water-efficient fittings, smart metering, leak detection and targeted efficiency projects, enabling them to manage their consumption more accurately and enhance their ability to respond to outages or system failures. Monitoring is then paired with greater awareness. By providing training and campaigning to all users of building space, they participate in lowering consumption even further and eliminating all potential waste sources.
Critically, businesses have help when it comes to implementing such projects or taking control of their water demands. Redefine has partnered with firms such as AQUAffection that provide comprehensive assistance in consulting and managing access to water across our commercial property portfolio.
By leveraging such partnerships and acting on the insights they unlock, property owners can optimise their water access and usage at scale. This, in turn, supports overall business growth. To quote Gerrie Brink, AQUAffection founder and managing director, once you understand and appreciate your property’s water consumption, it becomes easier to plan for the future.
The right kind of savings
An important part of addressing water security in South Africa is aligning economic and industrial development with efficiency and resilience. That goes for properties and buildings that are either retrofitted with water monitoring and saving devices, or those that are designed, built and managed with those devices installed from the word go. In either case, integration leads to long-term benefits.
In practice, this takes the shape of property owners and managers embedding ESG principles and standards across their portfolios, along with a strong focus on achieving certifications that validate real operational performance. Every smart meter, low-flush toilet, aerated tap and greywater tank contributes to a property’s ESG credentials, which results in lower operating costs and greater resilience to supply constraints, and overall freeing up public water capacity for municipalities and surrounding communities.
Some of Redefine’s examples of prioritising water efficiency at a commercial property include Mall of the South and Centurion Lifestyle Centre. Over the past three years, Mall of the South has rolled out a smart water meter project that aims to accurately monitor water usage in ablution facilities. Comparing the period usage between July and December, Mall of the South achieved a year-on-year kilolitre saving of 77%. Meanwhile, at Centurion Lifestyle Centre, the installation of a smart water meter, and subsequent identification and repair of a leak led to the centre reducing its year-on-year water demand by around 10.8%.
Both examples demonstrate that proactive, data-led utilities management can lead to meaningful decreases in properties’ water use. More importantly, they’re examples of initiatives that can be done at scale, replicable with other assets across portfolios and thus enabling developers to optimise their overall water usage nationwide. Whether it’s at a shopping centre, office park or industrial site, smart meters and other devices give immediate results.
When everyone makes a small change, they combine to create a bigger one. By contributing to broader water system resilience, driving awareness among people, and prioritising sustainability across industries like commercial real estate, we work together to confront this crisis.
