833 sick in Bronkhorstspruit. The water minister says there is no outbreak

833.

That is how many people in and around Bronkhorstspruit, east of Pretoria, have sought medical help after drinking the town's tap water, and on Monday 26 October the Minister of Water and Sanitation, Pemmy Majodina, said she is still firm that there is no outbreak. Her advice to residents the same day was blunt: Do not use the tap water until the treatment plant has been disinfected. The national Blue Drop scores rate every plant in the country if you want to check your own town.

About 4 in every 10 of the 833 patients are children aged four or younger. Nobody has died.

Six days earlier the figure stood at 408. We reported then that the works had run for weeks with no chlorine, and that the city had already been warned. The full account of those warnings is here.

Is the Bronkhorstspruit tap water safe to drink now?

Not according to the minister in charge of it. Majodina told residents on Monday 26 October not to use the tap water until the works had been disinfected.

Rand Water has taken over the repair job. Deputy President Paul Mashatile, who visited the town and the plant that day, would not give a date.

"Rand Water will take a few weeks sorting it out," he said. "We can't put a specific time frame for them, but as I speak to you, they have started with the work."

There is still no fixed date for when the tap water will be declared safe.

When did the chlorine stop, and when did anyone check?

Water left the Bronkhorstspruit works with no chlorine in it from 24 September until 14 October. Chlorine is the chemical that kills the germs in drinking water. Without it, nothing in the water stopped E. coli.

Inspectors from the Department of Water and Sanitation only tested the water on 14 October, and the plant was shut that day. That is 20 days of untreated water going into homes before anybody with a test kit arrived.

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Every dated step is below, with the source for each one.

408.00people20 Oct

833.00people26 Oct

20 Oct	408.00people
26 Oct	833.00people

Sources: Mail and Guardian (22 Oct 2026) and Daily Maverick (26 Oct 2026)

The chlorine stopped over a price fight. How does that happen?

It happens over money and paperwork, not drought and not a burst pipe.

Mayor Nasiphi Moya admitted negligence and said the City of Tshwane ran out of chlorine after a dispute with its supplier. The supplier, she said, had put its price up fourfold, and the two sides could not reach an agreement. The Daily Maverick reported the plant went weeks without chlorine to treat E. coli because of tender issues.

Nobody closed the taps while the argument ran. Water kept flowing into kitchens, and tests later found extremely high levels of E. coli and total coliforms in the water leaving the plant. Total coliforms are a warning sign that something living got into the supply.

Photo: 2hu4u / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0

Nobody knows where the water tankers are filling up. Why not?

With the plant shut, water arrives by truck. Some of those trucks belong to private operators, and on Monday 26 October the Deputy President said the government cannot say where their water comes from.

"We are quite concerned about private suppliers of water with water tankers because we don't know where they get that water from," Mashatile said.

So in a town where 833 people have already been made ill by water, the replacement supply has no stated source.

Photo: State Duma of the Russian Federation / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0

Has anyone been held responsible for 833 sick people?

One person has been moved out of their job, and no finding has been made against them.

The manager of the Bronkhorstspruit Water Treatment Works has been suspended while the city investigates the interruption of the chlorine supply. A suspension is not a guilty verdict. It keeps the person away from the job while the facts are established. The city has announced no outcome.

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Above that manager sits the City of Tshwane, where Moya has called its performance indefensible, and then the national department. No politician has resigned and no criminal charge has been laid against a named individual.

The DA opened a criminal case at Pretoria Central police station on Monday 19 October against the City of Tshwane and its municipal officials. Mayoral candidate Cilliers Brink said the city failed to chlorinate the water for three weeks, and that his party had warned Moya and her coalition repeatedly about the plant.

The Public Protector is also looking into the city. Every development is kept on our running Tshwane water page.

What is this costing people in Bronkhorstspruit?

Money, on top of the illness. Residents told the Daily Maverick on Sunday 25 October what the failure is doing to their budgets, under the headline quote "This thing is killing us".

Bottled water, trips to fetch water and days spent at Bronkhorstspruit District Hospital all come out of pockets that were not planning for it. That hospital is where many of the 833 cases were counted.

No compensation has been announced for the people who got sick.

Photo: Pawel Janiak pawelj / Wikimedia Commons, CC0

What would it take for the government to call this an outbreak?

A death, by the minister's own measure.

Asked on Monday 26 October about the 833 reported cases, Majodina said: "I'm still firm that there's no outbreak. There's no death. There is no one that is critical."

She rested the denial on two things: Nobody has died, and nobody is in a critical condition. How many people are ill, and how young they are, did not come into it. By that measure, 833 people queuing at a district hospital is not an outbreak, and four in every ten of them being under five years old does not change it.

Majodina also told SABC News that the Bronkhorstspruit plant now has enough chlorine for weeks. The plant that ran 20 days without any.