Water Bet: Marcel Golding's Rex Trueform Backs Private Utility SA Water Works Amid Municipal FailuresWater Bet: Marcel Golding's Rex Trueform Backs Private Utility SA Water Works Amid Municipal Failures

The wager carries a flag from the group's auditors. SAWW owes Ombrecorp, the vehicle through which Rex Trueform holds its stake, about R208M (KSh 1.62B, $12.5M), and auditors listed that loan as a key audit matter this year. Rex Trueform's annual report for the year to June 2026 says private operators can help cash-strapped municipalities with funding gaps, infrastructure backlogs and skills shortages.

"What differentiates SAWW is its proven ability to operate commercially sustainable municipal water services," the company said in the report. It named public-private partnerships, performance-based contracts, cutting water lost to leaks and theft, water reuse and repairing existing plants as areas of opportunity.

Two concessions, one loan

SAWW is a majority black-owned utility with two concessions. Silulumanzi has run water services in Mbombela, the capital of Mpumalanga, since 1999 under a 30-year contract, supplying about 120 million litres of drinking water a day to roughly 400,000 people. Siza Water operates a 30-year public-private partnership serving Ballito in KwaZulu-Natal for the iLembe District Municipality.

Rex Trueform holds its interest through Ombrecorp Trading. On 1 September it agreed to buy shares in Ombrecorp for R4.04M (KSh 31.5M, $242,700), which would raise its Ombrecorp stake from 52% to 70%. Its 2022 annual report put Ombrecorp's holding in SAWW's parent company at 30%.

The R208M loan is the figure investors will watch. A key audit matter is an area the auditors judged most significant in their work; it is not a finding of wrongdoing, and the report does not say when the loan is due.

What the numbers show

Group revenue rose 9% to R954.5M (KSh 7.44B, $57.3M), including retail sales of R704.8M (KSh 5.49B, $42.3M). Profit fell to R17.2M (KSh 130M, $1M) from R31.1M (KSh 247M, $1.9M), and no ordinary dividend was paid.

The group closed its Salt River clothing factories in 2005 and now runs property and owns Queenspark, Telemedia and Emerge Media, among other businesses. African and Overseas Enterprises holds a 55.7% voting interest, and Golding holds most of his stake through its parent company.

The scale of the problem

The government estimates repairing failing municipal water and sanitation systems will cost more than R400B (KSh 3.12T, $24B), while the National Treasury is trying to cut spending. Johannesburg and other parts of Gauteng have had repeated outages, and consumer goods maker AVI wrote in its annual report that "water shedding" has become a feature of some of the largest municipalities.

Kenya faces a similar test at utility level. As Mwenendo earlier reported, water sector loans owed to the National Treasury reached KSh 142.1B ($1.09B) by June 2026, which limits what utilities can spend on pipes and maintenance.

Mwenendo has not seen the full annual report or the terms of the SAWW loan, so the opportunity Rex Trueform describes remains the company's own assessment. Mwenendo also earlier reported on how AfDB financing is keeping Thwake Dam on track, an example of a public water project funded by a development lender.