Tshwane's taps ran 21 days with no chlorine. 408 people got sick

For 21 days, the water treatment works at Bronkhorstspruit sent water into people's homes with no chlorine in it.

Chlorine is the chemical that kills the germs in drinking water. It stopped arriving on 23 September. The taps stayed on. Inspectors from the Department of Water and Sanitation found out on 14 October, when they drove out and tested the water themselves. They shut the plant down that day.

By then 408 people had fallen ill with stomach and bowel infections, most of them children under four. That is the figure in the complaints now sitting with the Public Protector. Nobody died.

The city told residents the water was not fit to drink on 13 October. The chlorine had run out 20 days earlier.

How long did Bronkhorstspruit drink water with no chlorine in it?

Twenty-one days, according to the inspectors who closed the plant on 14 October. The warnings did not start in September. They started three years earlier.

408 people in and around Bronkhorstspruit, in the City of Tshwane, fell ill between 7 and 18 October 2026 after the town's water treatment works ran 21 days without chlorine, from 23 September to 14 October 2026.

Every dated step is below.

95.00%National pass mark

42.30%Bronkhorstspruit works

National pass mark	95.00%
Bronkhorstspruit works	42.30%

Source: 2023 Blue Drop report, Department of Water and Sanitation, as cited by TimesLIVE, 24 October 2026.

Photo: JMK / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0

What did the tests find in the tap water?

Stool samples from patients came back with norovirus, campylobacter and shigella in three of the four specimens that were analysed, the Mail & Guardian reported. Parliament was also told sapovirus was found. All of them cause vomiting and diarrhoea, and all of them are spread by sewage getting into water people swallow.

The department also found high E. coli and total coliforms at the works and at two reservoirs, Ekandustria and Zithobeni. E. coli in tap water means one thing. Waste has got into it.

Dr Jo Barnes of Stellenbosch University put it bluntly to the Mail & Guardian. "It is almost as if they drank water from the environment without any treatment at all," she said.

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The Bronkhorstspruit River, which feeds the system, was already loaded with sewage. Chlorine was the last thing between that and the kitchen tap. It was not there.

Why did boiling the water not keep everyone safe?

Residents were told to boil tap water before using it. That covers the kettle and the pot. It does not cover everything else water does in a house.

Anet Muir, the water department's director of compliance monitoring, told TimesLIVE the city's 13 October warning did not explain how bad the risk was. It said nothing about bathing in the water, washing dishes in it, or making ice cubes from it.

A toddler in a bath swallows water. Ice from the freezer was never boiled at all. People who did exactly what the notice told them could still have been swallowing sewage.

Photo: Mateusz Konieczny / Wikimedia Commons, CC0

What was already sitting on the city's desk before anyone got sick?

TimesLIVE reported on 24 October that Mayor Nasiphi Moya and her senior officials had received at least three reports on water quality in the months before people started getting ill.

The plant scored 42.3% in the 2023 Blue Drop audit. A pass is 95%. In February 2026 the national department sent the city a formal letter of non-compliance. The city wrote an action plan in March and promised to fix the filtration by 29 May.

That did not happen. Tests from June through September kept finding E. coli.

Moya did not dispute any of it at the parliamentary committee on 21 October. "This is indefensible, especially the issue of chlorine," she said, according to TimesLIVE. She added: "We couldn't adhere to the plan we gave to DWS in March and truly apologise for that. We failed to implement our own plan."

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The chlorine ran out, she said, because the supplier demanded four times the price and talks broke down.

Who is being held to account for the Bronkhorstspruit water?

So far, one person. The plant manager has been suspended, Moya confirmed, and the city's chief operations officer is investigating the chlorine failure and the delay in warning residents.

The Public Protector opened its own investigation on 22 October, after complaints from EFF treasurer-general and MP Omphile Maotwe and Freedom Front Plus regional leader Willie Spies. It is looking at whether the city failed to chlorinate the water and failed to warn people it was unsafe. That is an investigation, not a finding against anyone.

It sits on a longer record. The Mail & Guardian counted six criminal cases opened over Tshwane wastewater infrastructure between June 2020 and March 2024. Tshwane is also the city where nearly half the clean water never reaches a tap.

Photo: JMK / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0

What are people in Bronkhorstspruit saying about their water?

People in Bronkhorstspruit, Zithobeni, Dark City, Rethabiseng and Sokhulumi have been buying bottled water for weeks while their rates bills arrive as normal. If you have ever wondered what you are actually paying for on that bill, this is the sharp end of it.

The comparison people keep making is Cape Town. That city came within weeks of running out of water in 2018 and told residents the truth every week, which is much of how it pulled back from Day Zero. Bronkhorstspruit had water the whole time. It just had sewage in it, and silence for 20 days.

Is the tap water in the rest of Tshwane safe to drink now?

The problem is not only in Bronkhorstspruit.

On 21 October, Parliament was told water at the Fountains treatment works, which serves central Pretoria, had been found unsafe for human consumption. E. coli at Findlay Reservoir came back above the national standard.

Independent testing of Pretoria tap water, reported by GroundUp, reached a conclusion the city has not matched in any public notice. The water was fit only for flushing toilets.

Not for drinking. Not for cooking. Not for brushing your teeth. For flushing.

That was the water coming out of taps in the capital city of South Africa, in the week the mayor told Parliament the chlorine failure was indefensible.