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Amathole community in High Court to demand access to water

- Lee-Anne Gaertner

CALS will be in the Eastern Cape High Court on 18 November 2025 representing a community calling on the Amathole District Municipality to provide water

Next week, the Centre for Applied Legal Studies (CALS) will represent residents of three villages in the Amathole District Municipality in the Eastern Cape High Court. The community members seek to compel the Municipality to fulfil its constitutional obligation to provide sufficient water to 1,200 people living in the area.

Residents from the villages of Khomkulu-Toboyi, Merilis and Kunene in the Eastern Cape have approached the High Court with the assistance of the Centre for Applied Legal Studies (CALS) at the University of the Witwatersrand. The community argues that the Amathole District Municipality has failed to fulfil its constitutional obligation to supply the villages with sufficient water.

There are approximately 1,237 people residing in the three villages in the area. Less than half of the residents have water tanks to collect rainwater, while the majority are compelled to get their water from communal tanks, which are reportedly only filled sporadically. Many people are thus forced to walk long distances to rivers and streams to get to access water.

Lack of sufficient water places everyone living in the area at risk. Reports by water experts show that recurring droughts within the district, coupled with poor water service delivery, have left most of the residents with little to no access to safe water. Three water samples taken from sources used in the villages demonstrated that there is a high concentration of bacteria in the water and infections may occur if the water is not treated.

In other words, residents not only have to put their safety at risk by travelling in the dark to collect water, but that water is also extremely poor quality and dangerous to their health. Women and girls largely bear the social burden of carrying water for domestic use. Lack of access to sufficient water presents gendered harms affecting their rights to equality and education, including when girls are forced to miss school because they have no access to proper sanitation.

Regulations made under the Water Services Act set out minimum standards for basic water supply and basic sanitation. They provide that the minimum standard for basic water supply is at least 25 litres per person per day, or 6 kilolitres per household per month within 200 metres of a household. The residents do not have a water supply that meets the minimum standard. They therefore have no option but to approach the Eastern Cape High Court in an effort to compel the Municipality to provide them with potable water in the short-term, and an end to the water crisis in the long-term.

“It’s clear that the Municipality’s failures violate the residents’ constitutional rights to safe and sufficient water,” says Thuto Gabaphethe, attorney in the Home, Land and Rural Democracy programme at CALS. “But this right does not exist in isolation. Water is so central to human existence that this failure also infringes on other rights such as dignity, equality and education.”

The matter is set to be heard in the High Court in Mthatha on 18 November 2025.

CALS is represented in the matter by Adv Siphelo Mbeki and Prof Tracy-Lynn Field.

A number of organisations have applied to join the litigation as friends of the court, including Sonke Gender Justice represented by Lawyers for Human Rights as well as Equal Education Law Centre and I-Menstruate.

Read our founding documents in the matter here.

For inquiries, please contact:

From the Centre for Applied Legal Studies:

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