By Ramateu Monyokolo, on BusinessDay
Ramateu Monyokolo chairs the Rand Water Board and the Association of Water & Sanitation Institutions of South Africa. In an article on www.businessday.co.za, he delved into the topics of phantom demand and non-revenue water.
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South Africa’s water crisis is shaped by several overlapping pressures, which include but are not limited to rising consumption, ageing infrastructure, inadequate skills, infrastructure sabotage, illegal connections, failure to prioritise water infrastructure and growing frustration from communities.
Amid this complex reality, two technical terms are often involved interchangeably and inaccurately: phantom demand and non-revenue water. When these concepts are blurred, the result is not only conceptual confusion but also policy paralysis, as decision-makers struggle to diagnose the real sources of water losses and demand pressures.
Phantom demand
Phantom demand is frequently portrayed as excessive or irresponsible consumption by households and industry. This framing is convenient, but incomplete. In technical terms, phantom demand refers to apparent water use that does not correspond to real, beneficial consumption. It is demand that appears in system measurements but is not actually being used productively by consumers.
Phantom demand arises primarily from three sources:
- Inaccurate or non-functional metering
- Unaccounted system losses masquerading as consumption
- Poor demand modelling that fails to distinguish between legitimate use and systemic inefficiency
In other words, phantom demand is often a measurement failure, not a behavioural one.
Non-revenue water
By contrast, non-revenue water is a well-defined concept. It refers to water that is supplied but does not generate income. It includes physical losses through leaks and bursts, commercial losses from theft and meter inaccuracies, and authorised but unbilled consumption.
In South Africa, non-revenue water levels routinely exceed 40% nationally, with some municipalities far worse. This is structural failure. Non-revenue water represents wasted treatment costs, lost energy, foregone revenue and, most critically, lost water in a water-scarce country.
But non-revenue water is too often treated as a downstream accounting issue, rather than a central indicator of governance, maintenance discipline and institutional capability. High non-revenue water is not a mystery – it is the predictable outcome of deferred maintenance, skills erosion, weak asset management and the collapse of basic operational controls.
Read more:
Read the full article here: RAMATEU MONYOKOLO | Understanding phantom demand and non-revenue water
