{"id":96054,"date":"2026-02-19T10:53:57","date_gmt":"2026-02-19T10:53:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/south-africa\/all-news\/peoples-water-forum-highlights-municipal-water-failures"},"modified":"2026-02-19T11:09:44","modified_gmt":"2026-02-19T11:09:44","slug":"peoples-water-forum-highlights-municipal-water-failures","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/south-africa\/all-news\/peoples-water-forum-highlights-municipal-water-failures","title":{"rendered":"People&#8217;s Water Forum Highlights Municipal Water Failures"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"color: #ff6600\"><strong>Africa-Press &#8211; South-Africa. <\/strong><\/span>The People\u2019s Water Forum wants government to declare a national disaster over the country\u2019s persistent water challenges.<\/p>\n<p>The forum, which is made up of several civil society groups, held a media briefing on Wednesday at Constitution Hill in Johannesburg.<\/p>\n<p>This follows recent water outages in many parts of the city, which have seen some areas go for weeks without running water.<\/p>\n<p>The People\u2019s Water Forum said many affected communities in the city had reported having their water restored.<\/p>\n<p>However, the forum said this was a familiar pattern that had been happening over the last decade, where water comes and goes at different periods.<\/p>\n<p>Forum chairperson Ferrial Adam said this was a countrywide issue and needed a much more sustainable solution.<\/p>\n<p>Adam said: \u201cWe are saying if they declare it a national disaster \u2014 and it\u2019s not a national disaster on climate, so it\u2019s not the same as you\u2019d expect in the Western Cape where they have a drought \u2014 it\u2019s a national disaster on infrastructure. Most of our municipalities across the country are failing to provide water and sanitation services to people. When you have 70% of your waste water treatment works spewing sewage into your rivers and streams, that\u2019s a disaster \u2014 because it then affects river system health. When half of our water drinking systems are not fit for drinking, that\u2019s a disaster.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>While government has established a task team to look into the water crisis, it does not see the issue as rising to the level of a national disaster as it is fixable.<\/p>\n<p><strong>For More News And Analysis About <span style=\"color: #ff6600\">South-Africa<\/span> Follow <span style=\"color: #ff6600\">Africa-Press<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Africa-Press &#8211; South-Africa. The People\u2019s Water Forum wants government to declare a national disaster over the country\u2019s persistent water challenges. The forum, which is made up of several civil society groups, held a media briefing on Wednesday at Constitution Hill in Johannesburg. This follows recent water outages in many parts of the city, which have [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":84,"featured_media":96053,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,3],"tags":[275],"class_list":["post-96054","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-all-news","category-community","tag-south-africa-2"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v26.1 (Yoast SEO v27.0) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-premium-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>People&#039;s Water Forum Highlights Municipal Water Failures - South Africa<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The People\u2019s Water Forum wants government to declare a national disaster over the country\u2019s persistent water challenges. ...\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/south-africa\/all-news\/peoples-water-forum-highlights-municipal-water-failures\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"People&#039;s Water Forum Highlights Municipal Water Failures\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The People\u2019s Water Forum wants government to declare a national disaster over the country\u2019s persistent water challenges. ...\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/south-africa\/all-news\/peoples-water-forum-highlights-municipal-water-failures\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"South Africa\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/AfricaPressTunisiaa\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2026-02-19T10:53:57+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2026-02-19T11:09:44+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/static.africa-press.net\/south-africa\/sites\/31\/2026\/02\/sm_1771486765.904384.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1200\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"630\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"cfeditoren\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"cfeditoren\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"2 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/south-africa\/all-news\/peoples-water-forum-highlights-municipal-water-failures#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/south-africa\/all-news\/peoples-water-forum-highlights-municipal-water-failures\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"cfeditoren\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/south-africa\/#\/schema\/person\/068c7ab4e9634ae78ec5d54ec46598bb\"},\"headline\":\"People&#8217;s Water Forum Highlights Municipal Water Failures\",\"datePublished\":\"2026-02-19T10:53:57+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2026-02-19T11:09:44+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/south-africa\/all-news\/peoples-water-forum-highlights-municipal-water-failures\"},\"wordCount\":282,\"commentCount\":0,\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/south-africa\/all-news\/peoples-water-forum-highlights-municipal-water-failures#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/static.africa-press.net\/south-africa\/sites\/31\/2026\/02\/sm_1771486765.904384.jpg\",\"keywords\":[\"South-Africa\"],\"articleSection\":[\"all news\",\"community\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/south-africa\/all-news\/peoples-water-forum-highlights-municipal-water-failures#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/south-africa\/all-news\/peoples-water-forum-highlights-municipal-water-failures\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/south-africa\/all-news\/peoples-water-forum-highlights-municipal-water-failures\",\"name\":\"People's Water Forum Highlights Municipal Water Failures - 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