ABSTRACT
The City of Johannesburg in South Africa is an interesting story from a water resource management perspective for a number of reasons. Its existence in the first place is due to a geological factor in which gold-bearing reef was exposed on the surface through a series of ancient biological processes and tectonic events. This means that many of the logical factors that account for the existence of other major cities are simply absent in the case of Johannesburg. Known alternatively as eGoli or Gauteng (both meaning ‘the Place of Gold’ in isiZulu and seTswana respectively), the city of Johannesburg is one of the few great cities of the world that is not located on a river, a lake or a seashore. In fact Johannesburg straddles a major watershed, known as the Witwatersrand (translated literally as ‘Ridge of White Waters’), which divides the continent of Africa into rivers that flow into the Indian Ocean to the east, and rivers that flow into the Atlantic Ocean in the west. Located in the headwaters of two major international river basins, the Orange river and the Limpopo river, water supply challenges and water quality issues are but two of the major obstacles that confront the staff of Rand Water, the institution that is responsible for supplying the water that sustains, what is in effect, the economic engine of Africa. The significance of the Witwatersrand Ridge as a life support system relates to the large number of hominid fossils that occur, with some 40% of the world's known hominid fossil deposits being associated with this geological feature. So while Johannesburg is a modern African city, it is also the Cradle of Humankind 1 . Today the Witwatersrand metropolitan area with a population of around 11 million people, largely dominated by Johannesburg and the many satellite towns and cities spawned by the gold mining activities of the last century, is said to be one of the largest concentrations of humans that has developed away from a sustainable water resource. Rand Water, the statutory body responsible for providing potable water to this sprawling urban conurbation, is one of the largest bulk water suppliers in the world today. Therefore, the story of water in Johannesburg is the story of Rand Water, which in turn is about sustaining a major urban conurbation that is far greater than the actual limits of this one city alone.
