More than 2,000 pupils at Reiger Park Secondary School in Boksburg, Gauteng, have been left without reliable access to drinking water and functioning toilets, with eNCA reporting on 24 August 2026 that some pupils turned to a fire hydrant for water. The school’s governing body chairperson, Charona Louw, confirmed that sanitation infrastructure had been failing repeatedly and that the matter had been escalated to the district office.
eNCA broadcast footage and interviews describing broken taps and unusable toilets at the school. The allegation that pupils drank from a fire hydrant has been reported only by eNCA and has not been independently verified by a second source.
“They’re really desperate for water… They can’t get water from the toilets because they’re quite disgusting… The cleaners are refusing to clean, and we’ve had this problem for a while now,” an unnamed source told eNCA.
Louw said the school governing body had been repairing taps and toilets on a near-monthly basis and blamed vandalism by pupils for the recurring damage. She said the SGB had escalated the matter to the district office but had not received a lasting response.
“We have been fixing the taps almost every month,” Louw told eNCA. “Things are being broken by the same learners vandalising the taps and toilets.”
Gauteng Education MEC Lebogang Maile told The Citizen on 25 August 2026 that the department was addressing the school’s infrastructure concerns and had dispatched an inspector to assess ablution and water facilities. The Gauteng Department of Education said major maintenance and repairs were completed at the school in May 2025 following vandalism, but the problems have persisted.
The crisis at Reiger Park reflects a wider pattern of school infrastructure failure across South Africa, where water shortages, broken sanitation, and vandalism routinely disrupt learning. In the Western Cape, similar complaints have surfaced at schools in Mitchell’s Plain and Khayelitsha, where ageing plumbing and inadequate maintenance have left pupils without basic amenities for extended periods.
The exact cause of the water outage at Reiger Park remains unclear, with no confirmation of whether municipal supply failures, internal plumbing defects, or vandalism is primarily responsible. The number of functioning toilets at the time of reporting has also not been independently confirmed.
Cape Flats has not independently verified the fire hydrant claim or the conditions described at the school, and no on-the-ground reporter or SAPS release was available in connection with this story. We are seeking comment from the Gauteng Department of Education and will update this report by 27 August 2026.