High court orders Joburg to reconnect Balwin estate’s water supply

The City of Johannesburg was ordered to within two hours restore the water supply to a residential estate developed by JSE-listed Balwin Properties, after it was terminated because of alleged municipal accounts’ arrears.

The amounts allegedly owed to the city were already part of the metro’s dispute resolution process when water supply to the The Reid Lifestyle Estate in Linbro Park was cut off on Friday.

This resulted in the Reid Residents Association lodging an urgent application in the Johannesburg High Court, asking for it to order the metro to restore the water supply to the estate.

Acting Judge AJ Shepstone early on Friday evening ordered the metro to restore the water supply to the estate within two hours, but indefinitely postponed other relief the residents association was seeking in its application against the metro.

The disconnection and reconnection occurred against the backdrop of the City of Johannesburg having a total debtors book of R44.82 billion in January this year.

City of Joburg debtors book

Image: City of Joburg

Estate reconnected

City of Johannesburg director for communications and stakeholder engagement and spokesperson for group finance Stanley Maphologela said on Tuesday that the city respects The Reid judgment and has already reconnected the customer in line with the ruling.

Maphologela said the second part of the matter is still to be heard and the city will be defending the matter, because it does not agree with the envisaged interdict from credit control action.

He said the city argued that the disconnection was lawful because it was due to tampering with water infrastructure, but by agreement, conceded to reconnect the business pending resolution of the matter.

The Reid Residents Association has denied this allegation.

Maphologela added that the city had embarked on an aggressive credit control disconnection drive under Operation Buya Mthetho – ‘bring back the law’ –  which for now is focusing on business customers because of its large debtors book.

“There is another planned disconnection drive, which will focus on other categories of customers,” he said.

Debt-collection process

Maphologela said all the affected businesses and residents across the city had been sent pre-termination notices, which warned about impending disconnections of their services should they fail to honour their debt.

“A final letter of demand will be issued to the customer and to avoid being cut off the account must be paid by the stipulated due date,” Maphologela said.

“If customers do not respond to the letter of demand, their services will be cut off.”

“The city continues to appeal to business and resident customers who are struggling to service their accounts for several reasons, to approach the city, to avoid being cut off by signing an acknowledgement of debt (AOD),” he said.

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In an affidavit filed in support of the application on behalf of The Reid Resident Association, Maike Gohl from Schindlers Attorneys said the termination of service supply to the property results in the The Reid Residents Association “being held to ransom for amounts that it does not owe and which the city has a duty to reverse because they were unlawfully billed.”

Illegal water disconnection

Gohl said there are about 2 500 residents in the estate, who were without water as a result of the city’s illegal and unlawful disconnection of the supply on 8 June 2023.

“The residents at the property [then could not] bathe, use water for cooking or drinking, or cleaning, as a result of the city’s unlawful water disconnection.

“All persons in South Africa have a constitutional right of access to water as enshrined in the Constitution and … the state (including the city) is obliged to not act in a manner that violates this constitutional right.

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“The city gives each dwelling unit 6kl of water per month in terms of its prevailing water tariffs and … even if the city were entitled to disconnect the supply of water to the property based on the disputed amounts, which the applicant [The Reid] denies, the city is not lawfully entitled to disconnect the supply entirely,” she said.

Five disputes lodged

The Reid Residents Association has lodged five disputes with the City of Johannesburg that relate to three municipal accounts.

 Among other things, these disputes relate to:

• Double billing for water services on two accounts for consumption of one water meter.
• Being billed on one account on the residential tariff and the substantially higher business tariff on another account, despite the estate being a wholly residential property.
• Amounts being unpaid on another account because the city is billing the estate for charges related to the construction meter at the property, which should be billed to the developer Balwin Properties and not the body corporate, and where the estate has entered into an acknowledgement of debt and paid a R500 000 deposit to avoid the disconnection of services at the property while this dispute is being resolved.
• The estate is being billed by the city for consumption charges from 2023 for a meter that is not on the property. It claims these charges are fictitious and must be reversed.
• The reversal of amounts, interest and penalties on these accounts that are not due and the closure of some of these accounts.

Gohl said the city is well aware of the pending dispute related to the incorrect double billing of water and other disputes on these accounts.

Internal dispute resolution process

She said the residents association has engaged the city and also followed the city’s own internal dispute resolution processes “only to be ignored by the city and to have its services illegally and unlawfully terminated”.

“This renders the disconnection unlawful in terms of section 102 of the Local Government: Municipal Systems Act No. 32 of 2000,” she said.

Gohl said the estate received a notice on 8 June 2023 that “resembles something akin to a fine” but which makes absolutely no reference to any account number.

She said the “fine” amount is R506 365.45 but the estate does not have any idea how the city arrived at this amount because penalty charges in terms of the tariffs applicable to the current financial year is a maximum of R2 367.56.

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The “fine” was apparently issued for tampering, bypassing or interfering with the water meters at the estate.

The residents association has denied this allegation.

Gohl said the water supply to the estate was then illegally and unlawfully terminated on the same day on which the notice was served – and three days after entering into the acknowledgement of debt.

Criminal investigation first

She said the estate was also not served with a pre-termination notice, as is lawfully required before services are disconnected and the city had failed to follow its own water services by-laws.

Gohl said that, as set in the by-laws, a fine may only be issued once a criminal investigation has been completed and the offender has been prosecuted.

“The city cannot now on a moment’s notice, play judge, jury and executioner.

“This speaks to the mala fides of the city in illegally issuing fines, on the spot, disconnecting services and doing so under the guise of raising additional revenue or trying to ‘punish’ the applicant [The Reid] in some way,” she said.

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