To any other confused Cape Town citizens out there, when the council says that they will "disconnect" the water for non-payment, they do not mean they will literally cut it off and that there will be no water at all.
The council's meaning of "disconnect" means a trickle of 200 kilolitres of water per day because "water is a necessary commodity".
I finally discovered this recently after numerous queries about a rental house we own in Rugby, where illegal tenants are freely using a full flow of water, month after month, at our expense, and the water account now reaches R11 000, which we as the owners have to pay.
I have logged so many requests for "disconnect" (the trickle system) since November 2023, when we stopped paying the water account there, and eventually on March 26 this year someone from the council actually tried to put it on trickle but for some strange unknown reason did not do so.
When I followed up, it was registered on the council's computer as "not effective", and I received an SMS saying "query closed".
A supervisor is apparently looking into it but cannot even guarantee that it will be done, nor will she know who at the council has deemed it "not effective". Thank you Milnerton council for your wonderful non-help! And voting is just around the corner.
• Mayoral committee member for water and sanitation Zahid Badroodien responds: This is largely a private matter between the landlord and their tenants. The City can’t merely restrict water supply to a property based on a private dispute between the landlord and a tenant.
In this specific case, the water and sanitation directorate’s debt management department has confirmed that the property was revisited on April 11, and the water has been restricted to allow only a basic supply, due to the account being in arrears and non-payment.