Desperate for dignity: Joburg man explains angry ‘smell me’ encounter with mayor over water crisis

For Mauritz Preller and his family, life in Brixton has become a daily scramble for water, filling baths when taps briefly run and boiling kettles just to bathe. After years of frustration and more than two weeks of severe outages, he finally confronted Johannesburg mayor Dada Morero at the Brixton tower on Wednesday.

A video of the face-to-face moment encounter has gone viral, with an angry Preller telling Morero that he had not had a bath in days.

“You can smell me, I haven’t had water for 24 days. That apart, it’s been a year since we don’t have water at night,” he told Morero.

Reflecting on the moment, Preller told Our City News that he felt compelled to confront the mayor.

“We have accepted this way of living for so long. My thought on the day was that we have become desensitised and accepted this as the way to live. I blame my apathy for not standing up sooner or making a noise, for it to be solved.

“For this to have been solved now, action would have needed to be taken years ago,” he said.

Before confronting the mayor, Preller approached Johannesburg Water managing director Ntshavheni Mukwevho who told him that the water challenges in his area would persist until at least October.

“That had me desperate enough to sit down with the mayor,” he said.

Preller believes Morero handled their exchange respectfully and allowed him to ask questions. However, he left with little confidence in the suggested short-term solutions.

Preller, who lives opposite the old Brixton water tower, is part of a household of three. His son has just entered his teenage years. But instead of focusing on school runs and family routines, their days are dictated by one pressing question: “Is there water?”

“We have become accustomed to filling our bath when there is water. Our first issue is that we can no longer use the geyser in the house, as there has not been enough water pressure to fill it for about a year, so we never get to use it. So the bath is filled with cold water when there is, and we use this water to get by,” said Preller.

Laundry was another challenge. Clothes were washed only when water was available, usually on weekends. “During the week that is impossible on most days,” he said, adding that his wife manages the household under immense pressure. “She deserves a medal.”

Despite describing his household as relatively privileged compared with students and elderly residents in the area, Preller said the water crisis consumes time, money and energy.

He points to ageing infrastructure and growing densification as major contributors. The water system serving Brixton was designed in the 1930s for far fewer households. Today, multistorey student buildings stand behind older homes, placing increased pressure on an already strained network.

“A broken pump, with spare parts reportedly unavailable for weeks, has worsened the crisis. Imagine that. You cannot fix a pump because you don’t have spares. That is a sign of systems seriously broken,” he said.

Furthermore, Preller said that even when the pump runs, Brixton often waits for surrounding areas to receive a supply before the local tower fills. A full tower provides only three to four hours of water, and less during peak times.

Communication, he said, has been unreliable. “You cannot plan. You cannot trust. You cannot believe it.”

For Preller, confronting the mayor was not about politics. It was about dignity, and a simple request for water in his community’s taps. DM

This story is produced by Our City News, a nonprofit newsroom that serves the people of Johannesburg.