The Story of Water in South Africa
As South Africa marks Heritage Month, we pause to celebrate more than our landscapes and languages. We also honour something fundamental: the vessel that carries our most basic necessity: water. The story of bottled water in this land is cultural, ancient and deeply entwined with who we are. It is why the South African National Bottled Water Association (SANBWA) exists today – to protect that heritage, to ensure that what flows from our springs into a bottle carries with it purity and safety, but also respect for the legacy of water in this country.
The First Bottles
Long before glass or plastic, humans here found ingenious ways to store water. Tens of thousands of years ago, hunter-gatherer groups, ancestors of the San and Koi-San peoples, used ostrich eggshells as portable canteens. Emptied, cleaned, sometimes sealed with beeswax, holes bored for drinking; these shells served travellers and warriors in arid landscapes.
At Diepkloof Rock Shelter archaeologists have uncovered exquisitely decorated ostrich eggshell fragments, dating some 60 000 years, clearly used as water containers, evidence of survival filled with artistry and identity.
Soon clay joined the story. Early pottery vessels, some of the oldest in southern Africa, were used to store water, food and seeds. Fired clay set the stage for durability, community life around hearths, granaries, wells and long treks across drought-prone terrain.
These materials – ostrich eggshell, tortoise shell, clay – tell a story of adaptation and sustainability, as well as a respect for materials and ingenious design born of necessity.
Springs, Spa and Commercial Bottling
Across Europe, the story of bottled water followed its own path of culture and commerce. From Roman aqueducts feeding communal baths, to medieval spa towns built around natural springs, Europeans long associated water with healing and vitality. Places like Spa in Belgium, Vichy in France and Bath in England became destinations where “taking the waters” was both ritual and remedy. By the 16th and 17th centuries, mineral waters were being bottled at the source and transported to city dwellers eager for purity and health. This heritage of springs, spas, and bottled mineral waters shows a parallel instinct to SA’s own – a recognition that clean water is survival, but also ceremony, status and wellbeing.
Locally, some of the same impulses took root: people seeking clean, reputedly healthful water from springs rather than uncertain alternatives and as colonial settlement expanded, spa towns became fashionable.
In the modern era, the bottled water industry in South Africa has only relatively recent documented beginnings. SANBWA was founded in 1997 by water bottlers concerned about safety, provenance and consumer trust. From there, legislation and standards followed. Regulation passed in 2006, for example, created the legal regime governing packaged water, defining what natural water, spring water and mineral water mean; how they must be processed and how they are to be packaged.
Over the early 2000s the bottled water sector grew fast. By 2005, there were some 100 bottlers, from small local operations up to large automated plants. Brands such as Valpré emerged from pristine valleys; others drew on heritage springs. Bottlers now had to balance modern expectations of hygiene, environmental responsibility, taste, branding, consumer preferences (still water, sparkling), and the social license to operate.
Identity in Every Drop
Why does this deep history matter? Because water is a bearer of culture, identity and landscape. The earthen clay pot of a village, the engraved eggshell carried across dunes, the fresh spring under mountain rocks; each carries a story. Today’s labels, bottling standards, source water disclosures don’t erase that past; rather they build upon it.
For instance, when a spring water is bottled in the highlands of KwaZulu-Natal, or when a karst aquifer beneath the Western Cape gives up crystal water, there’s lineage in the land. The taste, the purity, the mouthfeel – these are shaped by geology, rainfall, ancestral stewardship.
Challenges & Responsibilities
As we lean into this heritage, we must recognise the responsibilities it imposes. The earliest San peoples knew that water was precious; they carried it in lightweight eggshells or stored it underground; they didn’t waste, they didn’t pollute. Today’s bottled water industry must mirror that ethic: strong regulation, transparent sourcing, sustainable packaging, ethical use of groundwater, minimised waste.
Beyond regulation, the real test lies in practice: in how we draw from springs, how we treat plastic, how we ensure that all consumers, not only those who can afford premium brands, have access to safe drinking water. In how we protect water sources against overuse, pollution and degradation.
Heritage Month invites us to look back but also to imagine forward. What will our water sources look like in 2050? Will we have protected every drop of this shared heritage? For SANBWA members, this question is not theoretical. They already treat their sources with respect and care, guided by sustainability reports, source-protection protocols and a deep awareness of unique recharge rates.
The industry’s responsibility is to bottle water safely, but also to ensure the ecosystems that feed our aquifers and springs remain healthy for generations to come. In doing so, we honour the ingenuity of our ancestors, the artistry of early potters, the springs that have shaped settlements, while safeguarding the lifeblood of our future.