Rand Water (previously known as the Rand Water Board) is a South African water utility that supplies potable water to the Gauteng province and other areas of the country and is the largest water utility in Africa. The water is drawn from numerous sources and is purified and supplied to industry, mining and local municipalities and is also involved in sanitation of waste water.

The Witwatersrand sits on the South African Highveld and consists of mostly grasslands with summer rains with an average yearly of 784mm rainfall. The Witwatersrand ridge stretches for 96 km from east to west with rivers north of the ridge flowing to north into the Limpopo and into the Indian Ocean while the rivers south of the ridge flow south into the Vaal and Orange River and into the Atlantic Ocean. The rivers in the Witwatersrand tended to dry out in the winter and were therefore a poor source of water and semiarid with grasslands and soil more suitable for cattle and sheep farming prior to the discovery of gold.

Gold was discovered on the Witwatersrand during March 1886 and several communities would rapidly develop from tents, to villages, towns and eventually into a city called Johannesburg. Being on the watershed of two river systems, the area was always short of water for the growing industry and community. After the Second Anglo-Boer War (1899–1902), the British government took control of the Transvaal Colony and with the need to restore gold mining to pre-war levels. The Transvaal administration decided to centralise the management of water resources on the Witwatersrand and the Rand Water Board was formed on 8 May 1903 with the enactment of Rand Water Board Incorporation Ordinance No. 32.

The Board would be made up of eleven members recommended by the Governor of the Transvaal Colony, the Johannesburg Town Council, the Chamber of Mines and other municipalities at the time and would amalgamate all other companies currently supply water to that point. The initial eleven members consisted of five members from the Chamber of Mines, three from the Johannesburg municipality, one from Germiston/Boksburg, one from Springs and one from Krugersdorp/Roodepoort. It would commence operations in 1905. Later membership increased to 34 as Benoni joined in 1906, the Railways in 1914, Brakpan in 1920, Randfontein in 1929, Nigel in 1935 and Pretoria and Vereeniging in 1944.

Initial water sources for the growing town of Johannesburg were obtained from three spruits or streams, one at a spruit in Fordsburg which still runs at the western end of Commissioner Street, a stream called Natalspruit at the eastern end of Commissioner Street near Jeppestown and a spring on Parktown ridge where Johannesburg General Hospital stands.

As mining and town expanded so demand grew and two organisations formed to supply water. Braamfontein Water Company with two wells in the Parktown region supplied the town and Vierfontein Syndicate that supplied mining and drinking water while the first grant to supply water came via the Sivewright Concession of 1887 that established the Johannesburg Waterworks and Exploration Company. James Sivewright was granted the concession by the South African Republic (ZAR) to supply water to the town of Johannesburg but the concession did not oblige his company to supply it. By 1889, Sivewright had sold his concession to Johannesburg Waterworks, Estate and Exploration Company Limited, that was owned by Barney Barnato.

The company then built a dam at a site in present-day Doornfontein where the Ellis Park Stadium is now positioned and then pumped the water to a reservoir on the ridge above Saratoga Avenue on the corner of Harrow Road and this gravity fed supply was said to have provided 3,409,569L during the rainy season. The population of the town, run at that time by a Sanitary Board, was petitioned in 1892 concerning the lack of adequate water supply and its cost, 15s per gallon and 5s per month for metering. The Johannesburg Waterworks Company was said to be supplying 4,091,400L a day by 1895 but had to use mules and carts to transport water to the higher parts of the town during a drought that year and all water still had to be boiled before use.

The ZAR government appointed a commission of enquiry in the same year to investigate the future of water supply and its quality. The commission handed down a recommendation that the management of water supply should be held by a public authority but this had not occurred before war broke out in 1899, the Second Boer War. In 1898, the Johannesburg Waterworks Company sunk boreholes on the farm Zuurbekom (on the outskirts of Lenasia; 26°18′04″S 27°48′49″E / 26.30104°S 27.81350°E / -26.30104; 27.81350), under which was a natural aquifer of 466 km² that would eventually produce 34 095 000 litres a day. In 1899, the Zuurbekom Pumphouse was erected by the Johannesburg Exploration and Estate Company and is still operational. Its purpose was to extract and provide the water from the dolomite rocks under the vast wetland to Central Witwatersrand. In 1975, it was declared a National Monument, and subsequently made into a Provincial Heritage Site in 2000.