South Africa added 25.1 trillion litres of dam capacity from 1963 to 1993, and 2.2 trillion litres between 1994 and 2024

South Africa’s post-1994 dam-building record has come under renewed scrutiny after claims that the democratic government added significantly less water storage capacity in the past 30 years than in the previous 30 years.

This sparked a heated backlash from the Department of Water and Sanitation (DWS) and some news publications.

DWS said in a statement that there are numerous water resource projects to build more water storage that “demonstrate its efforts of ensuring that the country is water secured, while making efforts to improve access to reliable and quality drinking water.”

The country has made progress since the dawn of democracy in expanding water services, especially within disadvantaged communities and rural areas.

According to StatsSA’s 2024 General Household Survey (GHS), 87.7% of households have access to piped water, increasing by 1.2 percentage points between 2004 and 2024.

That is broken down by 46.6% having access in their homes, 30.4% in their yard and the rest in their area. This assumes tap access equals water access as having a tap does not guarantee clean or reliable water.

Research has shown that progress with water supply and sanitation service delivery has been slow and in some instances, it is deteriorating.

“Despite some notable improvements, access to water declined in four provinces between 2002 and 2024,” StatsSA noted in its report.

StatsSA reported that between 2004 and 2024, access to water declined in Limpopo (-10.9 percentage points) and Mpumalanga (-3 percentage points), the Free State, and Gauteng.

While 71,8% of urban residents have access to safely managed water, only 36.7% of rural populations do, “and nearly all those relying on limited, unimproved, or even surface water live in rural areas,” noted StatsSA.

With a population growth of over 1.3% annually, many of South Africa’s 63 million citizens have been feeling the impact of water-woes in an already water-scarce country.

“Load shedding has been supplanted by the water security crisis, which poses a similar if not greater threat to the quality of life and economic prospects of all South Africans,” said President Cyril Ramaphosa in his 2025 January 8th statement.

Dam capacity debate

BusinessTech recently reported that South Africa built 1,583% more large dam capacity in the 30 years before 1994 than in the 30 years after it.

It said between 1964 and 1994, the government constructed 14 new dams that can store over 200 million cubic meters of water. Between 1994 and 2024, it only built two.

This caused a backlash from the DWS. The DWS was dismayed by BusinessTech’s “misinformed report” that the democratic government had only managed to build two big dams since 1994.

It said that since the dawn of democracy in 1994 and the last 30 years, the government has built 62 dams of various sizes.

It said the dams, which were constructed by DWS and others by municipalities, have a total water storage capacity of 4,479 million cubic metres.

“As such, the country’s water resources demand is in balance with the available water resources and the national storage capacity of reservoirs, sitting at 97% on average,” it said.

The DWS said it continues to plan and implement water resource infrastructure development to address any projected future water deficits and long-term needs.

This is done through building new dams, raising walls of existing dams to increase storage capacity and exploring other sources such as underground water and water re-use.

“While the country is on balance, DWS continues to develop more water resource infrastructure within the country and through transboundary water resources cooperation to ensure security for future demand,” it said.

“To this end, the department is currently implementing water resource projects in various parts of the country to augment the available water in the water supply systems.”

These include the raising of the Clanwilliam Dam wall on the west coast of the Western Cape, by 13 meters and the Tzaneen Dam wall project by 3 metres in the Limpopo province.

Construction of 11 new dams is also underway, with most of the projects still in their design phase and others in construction stages.

Despite the criticism of the article, the department did not dispute that it had only built two dams with a capacity of over 200 million cubic meters over the last 30 years.

Newsday crunches the numbers

Newsday asked the Department of Water and Sanitation for official data which it can use to calculate the dam capacity claims.

Wisane Mavasa, the director of communication at DWS, pointed Newsday to a link on their webpage.

According to the provided data, South Africa added 25.1 trillion litres of dam capacity in the 30 years before 1994, and 2.2 trillion litres in the 30 years after 1994.

This means that South Africa added over 1,100% more dam capacity in the three decades before 1994 than in the three decades afterwards.

This echoed the calculations from BusinessTech and the figures presented in the article.

This does not align the DWS’s claim, which was that 4.4 billion cubic metres (~4.4 trillion litres) was added over the last 30 years.

However, using a different spreadsheet provided by Mavasa, which included dams in neighbouring countries, may explain it.

If three mega dams in Lesotho and Eswatini are added to the South African dams, then it explains the figures from the DWS.

The Katse and Mohale dams in Lesotho and the Maguga dam in Eswatini account for 70% of the 4.48 billion cubic metres mentioned in the statement.

This means that the percentages differ from the BusinessTech article, as the latter only considered mega dams with over 200 million cubic meters of water.

While South Africa benefits from part of the water supply, these dams are in other countries, and listing them under South African dams is disingenuous.

For this reason, the DWS’ own list of registered dams is reliable for tracking the total water capacity in South Africa.

Newsday dam capacity calculations using the DWS’s data

Newsday followed the DWS’ guidance and used the data from all the dams built in South Africa.

According to the DWS’ official records, South Africa built 2,836 dams between 1964 and 1993 and 876 dams from 1994 to 2025.

Between 1963 and 1993, the dam capacity added to South Africa’s water storage amounted to 25.1 trillion litres of water.

Under the democratic government, South Africa added 2.2 trillion litres of dam capacity from 1994 to 2025.

The result of this is that South Africa has experienced a continuous downward trend in the available water capacity per person.

Note that the water capacity per person does not indicate available water per person. It shows the water available to each person if all dams were at full capacity.

Newsday asked the Department of Water and Sanitation to verify Newsday’s number and provide feedback if anything was wrong. The department did not respond.

The charts below show the South African dams and their combined capacity, which were built between 1963 and 1993, and from 1994 to 2024.