Civil society groups in South Africa are demanding a temporary halt to new data centre approvals, citing serious concerns about the strain such facilities place on the country's scarce water, land and electricity supplies. The South African Human Rights Commission (the country's constitutional rights watchdog) has received more than 250 public submissions on the issue since opening a consultation process in May, with transparency around resource consumption emerging as a central concern. The controversy has sharpened around a planned Equinix hyperscale facility in Cape Town — a city that narrowly averted a total water supply failure in 2018 — even as industry bodies argue that local data centres use significantly less water than global counterparts and that South Africa's current electricity surplus means new facilities pose no threat to grid stability.