Large parts of Nelson Mandela Bay ran dry on Wednesday and water pressure was much reduced in other parts after the metro was hit by a series of system failures and pipe bursts. On Wednesday night, the local business chamber called for a halt to political instability that was destroying the metro through service delivery failures.

With about 20 days to go before the first supply dam to Nelson Mandela Bay is set to fail, the metro suffered a series of water outages on Wednesday as pipes burst and the Nooitgedacht system was taken down for maintenance.

According to Nelson Mandela Bay's water dashboard, the two main supply dams to the metro, the Churchill and Impofu dams, are set to fail in 20 and 27 days respectively.

Earlier in May, during a public meeting, Barry Martin, the metro's water and sanitation boss, warned that one of the major problems with the Nooitgedacht Water Scheme, which brings water from the Gariep Dam in the Orange River to Nelson Mandela Bay, is that it has no spare capacity and if there is a failure the system will go down.

The Nooitgedacht scheme has been hailed as a "saving grace" for the metro,...