National Water and Sanitation Minister Senzo Mchunu has roasted 'idle' municipal officials for their failure to manage South Africa's water supplies.

Speaking in Durban, Water and Sanitation Minister Senzo Mchunu spoke out sharply against the "embarrassingly dirty" state of South Africa's rivers, roasted "idle" municipal officials and decried the "criminal" wastage of clean water gushing out of broken pipelines across the country.

While acknowledging that many municipalities had been given "huge responsibilities" to provide effective water and sanitation services, Mchunu said they should also realise that money would not drop magically from heaven.

Mchunu argued that municipalities were already receiving significant revenue from water services supplied to customers, but not enough of this money was being ploughed back into the maintenance of vital water and wastewater treatment infrastructure.

Instead, a common municipal refrain was to blame budget shortages, whereas maintenance had not been prioritised sufficiently in many local government budgets.

Instead of allocating sufficient water service revenue to renew or maintain infrastructure, this money was often "going to salaries and other things" and insufficient water service revenue was ring-fenced for operations, maintenance and upgrades.

"This [situation] is not new. It comes from the way in which we have allowed things to deteriorate... Our rivers are embarrassingly dirty... We are a water-scarce country, but we still have just enough water -- provided...