Extravagant councillor lunches should be sacrificed to ensure that everyone in Johannesburg receives their constitutional right to water, not the other way around.

Johannesburg's water system is in crisis: almost all areas of the city have experienced water outages over the past few years, and some are regularly without water for days, even weeks.

Despite the decline in service quality, water tariffs have increased by almost 200% over the past 10 years - far ahead of inflation. Good quality, reliable and affordable basic services are a critical foundation of equitable development. Delivering these should be at the top of Johannesburg's priority list.

The situation is worsening for multiple reasons, but the single most important is the dilapidated and leaking Johannesburg Water infrastructure. This not only contributes directly to service interruptions, but also to the rapidly rising cost of water.

Non-revenue water losses in the city are at 46%, and 25% of all the water that the City of Johannesburg buys from Rand Water disappears out of the dilapidated system through leaks. Those leaks waste 400 million litres of water each day, for which Johannesburg Water is paying R6-million - every day. That lost R2.2-billion a year is recovered through higher water tariffs.

Repairing old and broken infrastructure is, therefore, critical to improving services and reducing costs. And here is the supposed problem: Johannesburg...