Desperate for a share of ‘white gold’

When government officials visited Mission village in Ngqamakwe near Butterworth earlier this year to announce plans to roll out VIP toilets and resurface all gravel roads, Nowinile Nobhanda was very excited.

“My little knowledge of hygiene tells me once you visit a toilet, you must wash your hands,” she said. But washing hands after every visit to the newly-built toilet structure is a daily struggle, as there is no piped water across the three villages in the area, including KwaGquma and Ntwashu.”

Nobhanda, 85, has to use her R1400 pension to buy 50 litres of water each week from a local trader, known as Mabandla, to enable her unemployed daughter and four grandchildren to wash their hands after visiting the toilet, bathe, cook and clean the house.

That’s in addition to buying groceries for the entire family, buying electricity and keeping some cash to hire a bakkie to take her to the clinic for her regular check-ups.

The bed-ridden talkative granny’s dream, before she dies, is for the local municipality to install piped water closer to her home so that she can save a little more so she can help her grandchildren to further their education up to matric at least.

“We are greatful we have proper toilets thanks to the municipality. And also happy that our bumpy roads are getting fixed, but before anything else, access to water is a basic necessity, which in our case we still don’t enjoy 20 years after Mandela got us freedom,” she said.

This despite there being a dam 10km from Nobhanda’s home. Local chief Nombulelo Nobhanda, 65, said it always pained him to see her subjects buying water from local traders despite Siyalwini Dam being just a short distance away. The water pipes which draw water from this dam distribute it to Ngqamakwe, the central business district, and nearby villages such as Mangobomvu.

Three taps, which were erected next to each other, were installed at Mission village five years ago, but water comes in fits and starts. “At times the taps dry up for months, and we have to save money and buy it from Mbandla and Njozeni (the local water) traders.

The chief said delivery of water tanks to each household three years ago did not help either, as come the winter season, there is very little rain. “The tanks just lie there dry until summer rains,” said the chief.

The Daily Dispatch bumped into Anele Makhunga, 25, of Ngcisinindi, another Ngqamakhwe village where government-donated water tanks also run dry every winter. His family’s white bakkie is parked near a water spring, a stone’s throw from Siyalwini Dam. He uses a half-cut milk bottle to fill water drums his family need to build a new house in a nearby village. But the water comes out slowly – he has to wait a few minutes just to fill the half bottle.

The spring is also the only source of water for flocks of sheep, cattle and horses from surrounding villages.

“You have to be patient when your parents send you to collect water from here, because we compete with livestock. If you are not careful you will collect contaminated water and send it home for your family to drink. You have to be very careful,” said Makhunga, as he went about filling his water containers, hoping to collect more than 100 litres of water in all.

Nomvuyo Maphumza of Polar Park, opted to bring her entire washing to the spring, in order to make her job easier.

She is a domestic worker and said when she arrived at Polar Park from Dyosini village in Butterworth where taps are located across villages, she was surprised to find it was not the same in Ngqamakhwe.

“I have to come here as early as 7am, and do my washing and hang it to dry on this grass to make things easy for me.

“I don’t understand why villages which are so close to town, still have no access to piped water in this day and age. I don’t get it,” said Maphumza.

The chief said she has tried to highlight the water crises in her villages, but “there seems to be no plan to address it anytime soon”.

“I feel pity for elderly citizens such as MaRadebe , who at such an old age has to use pension money to buy basic things like water. I don’t know what to do. All we can do is sit and wait for a good Samaritan to come to our rescue before MaRadebe dies,” said the chief.

Mnquma mayor Bhabha Ganjana confirmed last week that several Ngqamakhwe villages still had no access to water, but both the local and Amathole District municipality, the main municipality tasked to deal with provision of piped water and proper sanitation, are doing their best to address the crisis.

Ganjana said: “R58-million has been set aside, and a service provider was going to be appointed, because Ngqamakhwe has a water scarcity problem,” said Ganjana.

Amathole district municipality’s Siyabulela Makunga said the municipality was aware of the water shortages in some villages in these areas, adding that it was planning to eradicate the “backlogs as quickly as funding will allow”.

“But it will still take a number of years before all areas are serviced,” he said.

ADM said the department of water and sanitation had also provided funding to assist in providing “interim water supply to those areas not yet serviced,” and that some funds were used to rehabilitate old borehole schemes in order to provide an interim supply”.

“Neither of these funding allocations were sufficient however, to address all the vulnerable areas. Despite the funding challenges, the ADM will do all in its power to provide services to its communities within its available means,” said Makunga.