Dear President Cyril Ramaphosa,

Re: South Africa Must Move Beyond Reactive Governance

Consulting Engineers South Africa (CESA) responds with urgency to your recent State of the Nation Address (SONA), where you acknowledged that water is now the ‘single most important issue for many South Africans, from Johannesburg to smaller towns and rural areas’. While we welcome the attention this critical issue has finally received at the highest level, we must stress that this crisis has been looming for decades, with warnings repeatedly issued by experts in the engineering industry and various sectors.

CESA has long warned that South Africa’s infrastructure, including water related infrastructure, is deteriorating under years of underinvestment and deferred maintenance. We have referred to the years of neglect and underinvestment in maintenance as a national crisis. What lessons have truly been learned from previous crises and why has innovation and strategic planning remained so limited despite clear knowledge of these challenges? The root causes lie not only in funding gaps but also in outdated systems, fragmented procurement processes, and the absence of integrated, forward-thinking strategies.

As you pointed out last night, this year we celebrate 30 years of our country’s Constitution, that should guarantee every citizen access to basic services, and yet, it is deeply troubling that so many endure unreliable to no water supply – a basic human right. It raises a fundamental question: Did it truly take protests and national media coverage in Gauteng, our economic hub, to bring this crisis to the forefront of government’s agenda?

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