Battle for water in Mvezo drags on

Freedom– even during Mandela month – means nothing for a Mvezo teenager who has to walk more than 2km to collect water from the Mbhashe River.

The late former president Nelson Mandela was born in Mvezo. But, 22 years after South Africa became a democracy with Mandela the first post-apartheid president of the country, Mvezo residents still have no running water.

Instead, they use water from the Mbashe River – the same water in which people bathe and do their laundry, and from which cattle drink.

Sibonisiwe Mzazi, 16, said while he might be considered a “born-free”, he did not feel any of the freedom that was so hard won.

Daily he collects water for his family in two 20-litre bottles ferried on a donkey.

“We should see freedom but as you can see there is no freedom here. We get our water from the river. It is far and sometimes the donkey acts up and the bottles fall and we have to go back to the river for water again,” he said.

“It has been like this for years; for as long as I can remember we have been using water from the river.”

Clad in a faded yellow T-shirt with President Jacob Zuma’s face on it, the boy said even the roads in his village were not up to scratch.

“Coming into the village you see a nicely paved road but it ends at the Great Place. It is not for the benefit of the entire village.

“ I walk this road every day when I go to school. I have to leave home at 6am so that I am at school on time.

“Sometimes I cannot concentrate because I am tired by the time I get to school,” he added.

Nosakhiwo Gwatyu said those who did not have donkeys to send to the river had to pay someone with a truck to get them water for R350.

“We are praying for rain. We struggle for water but there is clean water at the Great Place,” she said.

Pensioner Mnqayi Mqhakayi echoed Mzazi’s sentiments, saying they had been without water for years despite numerous complaints.

“Water from Mbashe is dirty. There are animals all over the river and we should not be using the same water as animals.

“There used to be a borehole that the whole community could use. It had clean water but we do not have that anymore.

“Water gets delivered from the municipality to the Great Place so they do not drink the same water as us,” Mqhakayi said.

The department built a clinic in Mvezo and it was completed and stocked up by 2012 but has never been opened for public use.

“Some of us are old and regularly need medication but we cannot use the clinic up the road. We have to go to other villages, Nywarha or Kroza. “We use dirty Mbashe water to take that medication.

However, we heard that the clinic would open on July 18 on Dalibhunga’s birthday,” he said.

Mzazi said he was not very optimistic about the opening of the clinic because for years they had been promised that the clinic would be opened on July 18 but it never had.

Provincial health spokesman Siyanda Manana said the clinic had remained closed for years because his department wanted to ensure everything worked properly.

“There were minor defects we were checking – like if the paint was done right and the doors were even.

“The clinic was completed last year. It would be open pretty soon,” Manana said in January.

Yesterday Manana could not confirm when the clinic would be open.

Mvezo chief Mandla Mandela could not be reached for comment at the time of writing. — siyab@dispatch.co.za