Buffalo City Metro Mayor Princess Faku drinking from a municipal tap at Ulwazi High School in Mdantsane on Friday.

• Citizen-led water testing at 72 schools found 20 samples – 12 from taps and eight from Jojo water tanks – to be “dangerously unsafe” with possible E. coli contamination.
• The contaminated water was discovered across 11 municipalities in six provinces, including several flagged in the 2023 Blue Drop Report for failing to meet basic drinking water standards.
• WaterCan has advised schools to stop using the water immediately and urged municipalities to conduct confirmatory testing and take urgent corrective action.

A citizen water-testing kit has yielded frightening results: 20 water samples from 72 schools were found to be “dangerously unsafe” across four provinces. Worse still, 12 of those 20 samples were taken directly from taps, and the remaining eight were from Jojo water tanks supplying potable water to communities.

The tests, which were conducted in the Western Cape, Free State, KwaZulu-Natal and Mpumalanga, were part of civic group WaterCan’s initiative to track water quality. The results have been uploaded to WaterCan’s Map My Water portal, which provides real-time analysis of the results while making them publicly accessible.

The aim is to build one of South Africa’s largest independent citizen-generated datasets on water quality.

WaterCan’s citizen science and training coordinator, Nomsa Daele, called the results “highly concerning” because they indicate possible faecal contamination, which poses a “direct health risk” to the staff and students of the schools.

She said this deepened the non-profit’s concern that South Africa’s water crisis was in a critical state following years of decline.

Daele said, “The presence of E. coli in drinking water is particularly serious and requires urgent attention, as it may lead to waterborne illnesses.”

She added that ensuring safe drinking water in schools was “critical to protecting the health, dignity, and well-being of children”.

Daele said that these tests are considered “indicator tests” and serve as an important early warning of contamination.

While indicator tests are generally considered reliable for screening, they indicate the presence of contaminants such as bacteria, nutrients, and metals, but they don’t provide an exact indication of contamination levels.

“We have advised the schools to exercise caution and avoid using the water for drinking purposes until the matter is resolved,” said Daele.

The school’s water testing project ran from 16 to 27 March.

WaterCan has asked these municipalities to conduct confirmatory water quality testing at the schools.

The municipalities were also asked to investigate the source of the contamination and to take immediate corrective action to ensure the water is safe for consumption.

Daele said:

She added that it was concerning that some of the municipalities where biological elements were found in school drinking water were also flagged in the Blue Drop Report released in 2023 for failing to meet basic compliance requirements.

Daele said municipalities flagged in the 2023 Blue Drop Report for failing to meet the basic requirements of the SANS 241:2015 drinking water standards included Makana, Chief Albert Luthuli, Sundays River and Nketoana.

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Daele added that 2026 marks a near doubling in the number of participating schools compared to the previous year, and that reaching all nine provinces was a sign of how important the schools project had become.

WaterCAN’s partners are Adopt-a-River, Enviro Vito, the Ahmed Kathrada Foundation, Rhodes University, the Nelson Mandela Bay Science Centre, the Wildlife and Environment Society of South Africa, the Cape Town Science Centre, the Institute for Water Research, and the LEAP Institute.