Residents in South Africa’s economic hub of Johannesburg clashed with police during a protest about a lack of water supply in areas west of the city center.

People blocked vehicle traffic with burning tires and fought police at a key intersection in the suburb of Westbury on Wednesday. Law-enforcement officials arrested one person, broadcaster eNCA reported.

Separately, members of the Democratic Alliance, an opposition party in the city, handed over a memorandum of issues to Executive Mayor Dada Morero about the ongoing water outages, noting that there are residents who haven’t had supply for 70 days. The party called on the leader to dissolve the board of Johannesburg Water, the utility that distributes in the region.

Morero of the African National Congress, the country’s biggest political party, reclaimed the mayorship of Johannesburg in August, marking the 10th time the post had changed hands since 2016. About 40% of Johannesburg’s water supply goes to waste through leaking pipes, while 35% of its electricity is lost, often through the theft of cables, which causes power cuts, and people bypassing their meters to steal.

“This is persisting — this is nothing new; this is more than 30 years of infrastructure neglect that we are seeing, all because we are seeing insufficient budgeting allocated to Johannesburg Water,” Nico de Jager, the DA’s shadow leader for infrastructure in the provincial legislature of Gauteng, where Johannesburg is situated, said in a video posted on X. Gauteng is home to 12-million people.

Like South Africa’s power plants and transport networks, the country’s water-supply systems have deteriorated because of inadequate maintenance, a lack of planning for population growth, mismanagement, corruption and political infighting.

In October, Rand Water — the continent’s largest bulk supplier that provides water to Gauteng’s cities — warned that taps may soon run dry if municipalities don’t act on its recommendations to fix leaks and conserve water. Gauteng’s municipalities routinely draw more water than the amount allocated to them.

In 2023, Tshwane — which includes the capital of Pretoria — battled the country’s worst cholera outbreak in 15 years in an incident that authorities tied to an overloaded wastewater system.