Non-revenue water and non-revenue life: A reflection on the making and mitigating of water losses in Johannesburg

Abstract

This article focuses on the problem of water losses, taken up through a discussion of a contentious infrastructure project called Operation Gcin’amanzi. It shows how Johannesburg Water worked to make a set of infrastructural and institutional-political ‘problems’ visible through numbers, highlighting important shifts in technologies of government. Today water loss auditing is becoming more important in the management of water infrastructure, and the story of Operation Gcin’amanzi is a significant episode in this history. I return to Operation Gcin’amanzi, then, in order to say something about the present, and specifically the ways technologies of government like the audit are reshaping practices for managing not only the built infrastructure, but also the human networks that connect to it.