Bad water in Bronkhorstspruit: 408 sick after 3 weeks without chlorine

Bronkhorstspruit’s tap water ran without chlorine for 3 weeks, and 408 people got sick. Most of them are children under 4. That is the figure that Pemmy Majodina, the Minister of Water and Sanitation, read out in a joint statement on Monday 19 October 2026. The City of Tshwane does not dispute it.

The city’s own water treatment works on the east side of the metro sent out unchlorinated water from Wednesday 24 September to Wednesday 14 October. That is the finding of the Department of Water and Sanitation. The plant serves Zithobeni, Bronkhorstspruit, Dark City, Rethabiseng and Sokhulumi. However, the city only told residents on 19 October not to drink, cook or bath with the water, even boiled. So the warning came 25 days after the chlorine stopped.

What was in the water

Chlorine is the step that kills what is in the water. In this case the water carried sewage. The department found the Bronkhorstspruit River polluted by broken wastewater works upstream in the Victor Khanye municipality, and by Tshwane’s own broken sewage pump stations. On 14 October its tests found extremely high levels of E. coli at the plant and at 2 reservoirs.

Between 7 and 18 October, 408 people came to clinics and hospitals with diarrhoea, cramps and dehydration. New cases peaked at 72 on 13 October. The youngest patient was 1 month old. The lab found norovirus, Campylobacter and Shigella in the patients. Nobody has died. Health Minister Aaron Motsoaledi said children get hit first because they have not yet built up immunity.

Why the chlorine ran out

Mayor Nasiphi Moya of ActionSA gave the reason herself at the briefing. The city’s chlorine supplier raised its price, talks failed and the plant ran out. Her figure for the increase was fourfold, as the Mail & Guardian reported. The Citizen quoted her on the consequence.

“We take responsibility for the negligence because it was during that time that they ran out of chlorine.”

Nasiphi Moya, Executive Mayor of Tshwane, 19 October 2026

Moya told the SABC the same evening that officials may negotiate an increase of about 20% and no more. She also said the same thing had happened in 2025. In her words, it has happened before, and this means this is a risk. Officials did not inform her in time, she said, and disciplinary steps against them have started under the chief operating officer. So the city knew in 2025 that its chlorine could be cut off over price. This year it was, and the water kept flowing.

What the city said while its plant was already closed

Put the dates next to each other. The chlorine stopped on 24 September. The first sick children arrived on 7 October, and the mayor says the city noticed the rise in cases around then. On 13 October the city started sending water tankers in. On 14 October the tests came back and the city closed the plant.

The city’s first public statement came on Thursday 15 October, from its MMC for Health, Tshegofatso Mashabela of the EFF. PoliticsWeb carries the statement. It said that between 140 and 160 people had reported stomach symptoms. The illness may be water-borne, it said, but the true cause has not yet been established. It encouraged residents to use tanker water as a precaution. Yet the plant had been shut the day before for E. coli.

The rules say something different. The 2025 Compulsory Standards for Water Services require a water authority to tell people when their water is not safe. TimesLIVE reported Majodina’s words at the briefing: the city failed to warn residents in the affected areas. Moya’s defence is that the city uses WhatsApp, social media and ward councillors. She added that the city is not denying that it may not have been sufficient to get to the people.

GroundUp spoke to residents in Zithobeni. Nicky Sibanda said her 1-year-old son was treated for diarrhoea after drinking the discoloured tap water. Selina Maphosa said the municipality does not give residents full information about the problem. Caranesta de Jager told Caxton Network News that the water they pay for is undrinkable.

A plant the regulator scored at 42%

This plant did not fail in September. The Department of Water and Sanitation’s Blue Drop National Report of 2023 gave the Bronkhorstspruit Town system a score of 42.3%. In 2014 the same system scored 96.8%. The audit covered 2021 to 2022, when the DA ran the city. Anything under 31% counts as dysfunctional, so the plant sat 11 points above that line 3 years ago.

The money tells the same story. The ActionSA statement of 20 October gives the mayor’s figures. In the 2023/24 financial year, with Cilliers Brink of the DA as mayor, the city budgeted R1.2 million for the plant. Under Moya the city spent about R20.8 million on it in 2025/26 and approved R57 million for this year. She says more than R107 million over 3 years. That is a real increase. It also shows how little was spent before. The plant is more than 60 years old.

Still, in September the city’s people said it was fine. Caxton Network News reported on 23 September that ActionSA ward councillor Cobus Coetzee had called the plant in perfect working condition. The city did not answer Caxton’s 24 questions. The DA said at the time that the plant produced 15 megalitres a day against a design of 54.

Cholera, tankers and sabotage

Three claims are going around, and each has an answer on the record. First, cholera. On 19 October Cilliers Brink wrote on X that a whistleblower had told the DA about tests that detected cholera bacteria at the works. The DA did not release the test. On the record, the NICD found no cholera bacteria in the patients’ stool samples. The mayor said tests found a variant of Vibrio cholerae in the water, but not the strain that causes epidemic cholera. Power 98.7 reported Deputy Minister David Mahlobo’s words: bacteria linked to the cholera family were detected at the plant.

Moya answered Brink on X that same night. She said he was mayor during the Hammanskraal cholera outbreak of 2023, so he knows the difference between bacteria in a sample and the cause of an outbreak. SAnews reported in June 2023 that the outbreak killed 29 people in Gauteng.

The tanker claim

Second, the water tanker mafia. The DA statement of 19 October says the coalition spent R777 million on tankers in 2024/25 and R181 million on repairs. The mayor says the R777 million was purchase orders on the system. About R156 million of it was cancelled or duplicated, and real spending was about R441 million. Both figures are theirs. The Sunday Times reported in March 2026 that 2 companies linked to ANC Tshwane leaders received about R31.7 million for trucking water, and that neither owns a tanker. Deputy Mayor Eugene Modise of the ANC was a director of one of them until shortly before he became a councillor. The Special Investigating Unit is looking at the contracts at the city manager’s request.

The sabotage claim

Third, sabotage. Olivia La Grange wrote on X that Tshwane is being deliberately sabotaged, 2 big issues in 1 month. The other issue is real. Rekord reported that vandals wrecked the raw water pump station at the Temba plant on 10 October and left parts of Hammanskraal dry. Brink had said in a statement dated 2 October that the security contracts at the city’s infrastructure sites lapsed on 1 October with nothing in their place. The city has not answered that claim. But nobody vandalised Bronkhorstspruit. On the mayor’s own account, the city did not buy chlorine because the price went up, and nobody told her.

What happens to the plant now

The plant reopened on 16 October with chlorine, but the water is still not safe to drink. Moya told the SABC on 20 October that Rand Water wants to isolate the plant so that it does not supply residents at all. Tankers from Cullinan will carry the whole supply, on a schedule held by the ward councillors. Rand Water is being appointed to run the repairs. The Water Research Commission is testing the water on its own, with a full report due by 28 October.

The parties that run the city now charge each other

The local election is on Wednesday 4 November, and that date explains the week. A coalition of the ANC, the EFF and ActionSA runs the city, with Moya as mayor since October 2024. TimesLIVE reported on 12 October that the coalition held a briefing under the heading that it leaves Tshwane better than it found it.

On 19 October the DA laid a criminal charge against the city at Pretoria Central police station under the Water Services Act. The Citizen reported on 20 October that the EFF would lay charges against the mayor and the city manager, lodge a complaint with the Human Rights Commission and demand Moya’s resignation. In its statement the EFF said on X that it was shocked that the City never warned residents the water was unsafe.

Yet the EFF sits in that mayoral committee. Its own member holds the health portfolio, and her name is on the 15 October statement that said the cause was not established. The EFF put Moya in office in 2024. Two weeks before the vote, it wants her out.

My view

Who does this sit with? The sabotage theory does not survive the mayor’s own account, and the cholera claim does not survive the tests. What is left is a city that knew in 2025 that its chlorine could be cut off over price. It let the plant run without it anyway. It closed the plant on 14 October, and the next day it said the cause was not established. The warning the law requires came 25 days late, because 408 people walked into a clinic.

That is negligence, and the mayor has used the word herself. Saying it 15 days before an election is not the same as explaining it. So the question for Mayor Moya is this. Between 24 September and 14 October, which officials knew that water was leaving that plant without chlorine, and why did none of them pick up the phone?

If a detail in this story is wrong

I tell these stories from the public record. I am not a journalist, and I cannot place your story on the record. So if you believe a detail is wrong, contact the outlet that published it. Only the media can correct the public record. You can still send me the full story through my website.

Sources

• Joint media statement by the Ministries of Health and Water and Sanitation, the Gauteng Provincial Government and the City of Tshwane, read by Minister Pemmy Majodina, 19 October 2026, via SAnews: sanews.gov.za
• Mail & Guardian, Sheree Bega, ‘Tshwane admits negligence after 408 fall ill in Bronkhorstspruit’, 19 October 2026: mg.co.za
• The Citizen, Chulumanco Mahamba, ‘Bronkhorstspruit residents warned not to drink tap water as 408 cases of illness reported’, 19 October 2026: citizen.co.za
• SABC News, ‘Moya takes responsibility for Bronkhorstspruit water debacle’, 20 October 2026: sabcnews.com; ‘Bronkhorstspruit water halted after gastrointestinal illness cases’, Viola May, 20 October 2026: sabcnews.com; ‘Bronkhorstspruit water undrinkable’ (Prof Anja du Plessis), 20 October 2026: youtube.com
• City of Tshwane statement by Cllr Tshegofatso Mashabela, MMC for Health, 15 October 2026, via PoliticsWeb: politicsweb.co.za; The Citizen, Enkosi Selane, ‘City scratches its head over 160 sick in Tshwane’, 16 October 2026: citizen.co.za
• TimesLIVE, Nandi Ntini, ‘Bronkhorstspruit crisis: Tshwane failed to warn residents over unsafe water’, 19 October 2026: timeslive.co.za; Innocentia Nkadimeng, ‘Tshwane mayor Moya hits back at Brink over Bronkhorstspruit water crisis’, 20 October 2026: timeslive.co.za
• GroundUp, Seth Thorne and Warren Mabona, ‘Hundreds of children fall ill after Tshwane fails to chlorinate water’, 19 October 2026: groundup.org.za
• Caxton Network News / The Citizen, Yolanda Lemmer, ‘DA opens criminal case over Bronkhorstspruit water crisis’, 20 October 2026: citizen.co.za; ‘Typhoid in Bronkhorstspruit: Political battle erupts over water crisis’, 23 September 2026: citizen.co.za
• Department of Water and Sanitation, Blue Drop National Report 2023, page 179 (City of Tshwane): ws.dws.gov.za
• ActionSA, ‘Mayor Moya rejects misleading claims about Bronkhorstspruit water crisis’, 20 October 2026: actionsa.org.za
• DA (Cilliers Brink) via PoliticsWeb: ‘DA to open criminal case over Tshwane’s water failures in Bronkhorstspruit’, 16 October 2026: politicsweb.co.za; ‘Cholera warning: Tshwane water emergency worsens, amid water tanker cash-in’, 19 October 2026: politicsweb.co.za; ‘Tshwane’s infrastructure under risk from criminal attack’, 4 October 2026: politicsweb.co.za
• Cilliers Brink (@CilliersB) on X, 19 October 2026: x.com; Nasiphi Moya (@nasiphim) on X, 19 October 2026: the reply to Brink and the apology to Region 7
• Power 98.7, ‘Tshwane water crisis: Ministers condemn failure to warn residents’, 19 October 2026: power987.co.za; POWER 98.7 (@Powerfm987) on X, 20 October 2026: x.com
• SAnews, ‘Cholera death toll rises to 31 in SA, 166 laboratory-confirmed cases recorded’, 8 June 2023: sanews.gov.za
• Sunday Times / TimesLIVE, Sipho Masondo and Isaac Mahlangu, ‘Water blesser exposed: the ANC bigwigs who truck water but have no tankers’, 15 March 2026: timeslive.co.za
• Olivia La Grange (@Olivia_LaGrange) on X, 20 October 2026: x.com
• Rekord, Trott Chaane, ‘Water supply disrupted in Hammanskraal following vandalism at Temba plant’, 15 October 2026: citizen.co.za
• EWN, Anelitha Fandese, ‘Indefinite wait before Tshwane’s Bronkhorstspruit residents have safe drinking tap water’, 20 October 2026: ewn.co.za; IOL, ‘Unchlorinated Tshwane water linked to 408 illness cases’, 20 October 2026: iol.co.za; eNCA, ‘Bronkhorstspruit water crisis: Tshwane deploys 36 water tankers’, 19 October 2026: enca.com
• TimesLIVE, Sisanda Mbolekwa, ‘We leave Tshwane better than we found it, says outgoing coalition’, 12 October 2026: timeslive.co.za
• The Citizen, Enkosi Selane, ‘EFF to open case against Tshwane mayor over unsafe Bronkhorstspruit water’, 20 October 2026: citizen.co.za; EFF (@EFFSouthAfrica) statement on X, 20 October 2026: x.com
• Clips with sound: SABC News (19 and 20 October 2026, Nasiphi Moya and Aaron Motsoaledi) and Newzroom Afrika (20 October 2026, Nasiphi Moya), used for news reporting and commentary.
• Photos: Cilliers Brink, Wikimedia Commons (CC0). Pemmy Majodina, Engineering News / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 4.0). David Mahlobo, Engineering News / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 3.0). Omphile Maotwe, Economic Freedom Fighters / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 3.0). Aaron Motsoaledi, Tourism Business Council of South Africa / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0). Nasiphi Moya, her X profile picture (@nasiphim). Screenshots of the statements, reports and X posts are used for news reporting and commentary.