South Africa’s New Groundwater Rules: What Farmers Need To Know
On a dusty gravel road outside Bloemfontein, a borehole pump hums steadily as water spills into a storage tank. For the farmer watching the flow, that sound means survival for his lucerne and cattle. For South Africa’s water regulators, it is part of a vast, largely unmapped network of groundwater use they are now racing to bring under clearer rules.
By around August or September 2026, the country expects to have its first dedicated Regulations for the Protection and Management of Groundwater Resources officially in place. The regulations are being developed by the Department of Water and Sanitation (DWS) after a long consultation that began in December 2025 and drew comments until late March 2026.
For farmers who rely on boreholes to irrigate crops or water livestock, the new rules will shape how they drill, register, and monitor groundwater use in the years ahead. They also offer a glimpse of what other water-stressed countries in the region, including Zimbabwe, may choose to emulate.
When Will The Groundwater Regulations Take Effect?
Speaking to Farmer’s Weekly, Raquel Nosie Mazwi, director of mine and industrial water quality at the DWS, said the department is targeting late winter or early spring 2026 for finalisation and gazetting.
“We’re still capturing the comments, which includes bringing in specialists to respond to specific issues,” Mazwi said. She described a “very labour-intensive process to capture all the comments and agree on the changes that need to be made to the regulations.”
The original public comment period ran for 60 days from December 2025, but had to be extended to 27 March 2026 because of delays and additional consultations with some sectors. Every issue raised now has to be assessed, one by one, which may still influence the final date.
FFA Explainer:
Gazetting is the formal step where new regulations are published in a government gazette. Once gazetted, they move from draft proposals to enforceable rules. The period between public comment and gazetting is when officials review feedback, adjust wording, and test how the rules will work in practice.
Why Regulate Groundwater Now?
South Africa finalised a Groundwater Management Strategy more than a decade ago, but never had a specific regulatory framework focused solely on groundwater. The new regulations are designed to close that gap.
Groundwater already sustains thousands of farms, towns, and villages. During droughts, boreholes often keep fruit trees alive, fill cattle troughs, and supply drinking water when dams run low. Yet authorities have had only a partial view of how much is being pumped, where, and by whom.
According to Surina Esterhuyse, associate professor at the University of the Free State’s Centre for Environmental Management, the DWS maintains a National Groundwater Archive with almost 300 000 records of geosites, most of them boreholes. But that is only part of the picture.
She noted that many more boreholes are believed to exist than are officially recorded, with an estimated 80 000 to 100 000 new boreholes drilled every year. While the DWS has information on users who operate under water-use licences, general authorisations, or existing lawful-use provisions, it lacks reliable data on many smaller users.
These include household boreholes and other Schedule 1 users, who currently do not have to register their groundwater abstraction.
FFA Explainer:
Schedule 1 water use in South African law refers to small-scale domestic and subsistence uses of water, such as watering a garden, livestock watering at small scale, or household use. These uses are allowed without a licence, provided they meet certain limits and do not cause harm.
Esterhuyse argues that building an accurate database of groundwater users and how much they pump is fundamental.
“All we want is for you to tell us where your borehole is, who your driller was, and how much water you are taking out,” she said. That information, she added, would help give a sense of the “cumulative effect” of groundwater use across the country.
Will Existing Boreholes Be Forced To Close?
One of the biggest anxieties among organised agriculture has been whether new rules will force long-established boreholes to shut down or require farmers to undo infrastructure.
Mazwi moved quickly to calm those fears. She stressed that the regulations will not be applied retrospectively. Existing lawful groundwater users will not be required to remove boreholes or stop activities that are already authorised.
Instead, the draft regulations are mainly directed at future groundwater developments. Existing users will still need to meet information and reporting requirements, but they will not be treated as if they are starting from scratch.
For many commercial farmers, particularly those already operating under water-use licences or general authorisations, this could mean that their current metering and record-keeping practices already match what the regulations expect.
What About The 5km Buffer Zones?
A proposed 5km buffer zone around strategic groundwater resources has sparked particular concern. Farmers feared that falling inside such a zone could mean an automatic ban on new boreholes or expansions.
Mazwi drew a clear distinction here. These buffer zones are classified as restricted areas, not prohibited ones. The difference is important.
In practice, she explained, new developments inside a restricted zone can still be considered through the water-use licensing process. The key condition is that applicants must show, using scientific studies, that their proposed activity will not harm the aquifer or strategic groundwater resource.
That places a higher bar on developments in sensitive areas, but it does not slam the door shut.
Who Will Feel The Impact Most Strongly?
Mazwi suggested that established commercial producers may see less disruption than many fear. Large operations are often already complying with requirements mirrored in the draft regulations: metering groundwater abstraction, keeping records, and submitting information to the DWS under the terms of their licences.
“It will be a burden on small farmers who may not have operated under a general authorisation or a water-use licence,” she acknowledged.
Users who have historically operated outside licensing or registration systems are likely to feel the greatest change. For some, that could mean new obligations to register, install simple meters, or undertake water-quality testing.
Mazwi confirmed that the DWS has received substantial feedback on the proposed water-quality testing requirements and said this concern will be considered during finalisation. That may prove crucial for small and emerging farmers, for whom frequent lab tests can be costly or logistically difficult.
Will This Raise Food Production Costs?
Farmers already squeezed by high input costs have asked whether the regulations will make it more expensive to grow food. On this point, Mazwi offered a measured view.
She said the regulations are unlikely to add significantly to production costs for many commercial groundwater users, because those farmers already meet most of the current regulatory requirements through their licence conditions.
Over time, the aim is not to weigh farmers down with extra compliance for its own sake, but to protect the very groundwater supplies that make their businesses viable. Strategic aquifers feed municipal well fields and town water schemes as well as farms. Over-abstraction or contamination in one corner of a catchment can ripple out across communities.
The DWS’s ultimate goal, Mazwi said, is to build a clearer picture of groundwater abstraction across the country, deepen its understanding of Schedule 1 water use, and strengthen the protection of groundwater resources that underpin sustainable public water supply.
Why This Matters North Of The Limpopo
While these regulations apply to South Africa, the issues they tackle echo loudly in neighbouring countries. In Zimbabwe, where boreholes now dot new A1 resettlement areas from Mhondoro to Gokwe, groundwater use has grown faster than formal oversight in many districts.
Under National Development Strategy 1 (NDS1), Zimbabwe’s government has pledged to expand irrigation and improve water security for smallholders. That push increasingly depends on groundwater — from communal gardens tapping shallow aquifers, to larger schemes drilling deep boreholes for centre pivots.
Yet, as in South Africa, records are often stronger for large commercial users than for thousands of small, informal abstractions. The questions now being debated in Pretoria — who is using how much water, from which aquifer, and with what long-term impact — are the same ones that water planners in Harare, Masvingo, and Bulawayo will need to answer.
A maize farmer in Chiredzi or an irrigated wheat grower in Nyanga faces similar risks: investing in a borehole only to find the water table dropping, or discovering too late that salinity and pollution have crept in from upstream activities.
South Africa’s move towards a dedicated regulatory framework for groundwater offers a live case study for Zimbabwean officials, researchers, and farmer unions weighing their own options. It touches directly on SDG 6 on clean water and sanitation and SDG 2 on ending hunger.
What Should Farmers Watch For Next?
For South African farmers, the months ahead will be about clarity. As DWS specialists work through the last of the public comments, the final wording will determine how far-reaching some measures will be, particularly around data reporting and water-quality testing.
Producer organisations, from irrigation boards to commodity groups, will play an important role in turning legal language into practical checklists and training. For small and emerging farmers, extension services and commodity associations will likely need support to help interpret requirements and avoid unintended non-compliance.
In Zimbabwe, farmer leaders and water managers would do well to follow the process closely. A future Zimbabwean framework for groundwater protection could draw on South Africa’s experience — learning both from what works and from any stumbling blocks that emerge once the regulations meet real farms.
Back on that Free State farm, the pump runs on, drawing water that fell as rain years or even decades ago. The new regulations will not change the sound of that motor. What they aim to change is how clearly the country can hear all the other pumps running at the same time — and whether, together, they are draining tomorrow’s supply to solve today’s drought.
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