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An NPO is keeping communities alive with 150 tonnes of clean water — and hope — every day in the Eastern Cape.
“It’s like Christmas coming early!” says a delighted Ntombethemba Bavuma, as the Gift of the Givers water tanker pulls up in the devastated Nkanini shacklands in Makhanda.
The foundation — a home-grown NPO which specialises in disaster responses around Africa — is the only reliable source of water for a number of communities in the Eastern Cape.
Every day, often working 15-hour days, Gift of the Givers staff members extract thousands of litres of clean water from their borehole in the tiny town of Adelaide, and filter and deliver it throughout the province to communities, schools, clinics, and hospitals.
Even municipalities responsible for the water disaster get deliveries from the foundation.
The NPO delivers to Adelaide, Dikeni, Komani, Ngqushwa, Makhanda, Bedford, Cookhouse, Pearston, KwaMaqoma and Graaff-Reinet.
They say their mission is to bring hope and restore dignity to the most vulnerable.
In places such as Nkanini, in dysfunctional Makana municipality — where Sarah Baartman district municipality is responsible for building water infrastructure but has not done it — the arrival of the foundation-branded Isuzu water bowsers is a cause for celebration.
At midday on a Wednesday, the Dispatch team arrived at the foundation’s filtration base in Reds village, Adelaide.
A bowser is being filled and is about to take the windy little 100km tar road, which has huge potholes, to Makhanda.
It takes only 15 minutes for the tank to fill. Drivers Granville Douglas and Shane Stowman have a sense of urgency in their step as they get going on the hour-long, bumpy mission to Nkanini.
We arrive to see children playing games on the streets.
The tanker pulls up on the corner. A young boy is already running to the truck and promptly helps connect the bowser to a 5,000l community tank.
Residents are pouring out of their homes. They come from all directions, some pushing wheelbarrows loaded with buckets, others homemade or rejigged trolleys.
The water has arrived.
In four minutes a line has formed and it is clear that the moment someone has been filled up, they rush off, unload and are quickly back in the queue.
“We struggle for water,” says Bavuma, who has managed to fill three 20l buckets which will last her, her two children and a partner a day or two.
Carol Speckman, of Nkanini, says if the foundation does not arrive, they have to buy water for R50 from a neighbouring township.“We struggle a lot here for water. We are four in the house and if I fill ten 20l buckets it lasts a while but I have to do everything with it.”
The Dispatch team witnessed water being delivered to Settlers Hospital in Makhanda and a school in Adelaide.
Muhammad Gangat, head of Gift of the Giver’s Eastern Cape water section, says distress calls come in daily.
This sets off a quick assessment — how much is needed and for how long will they have to be supplied?
“We do about 100,000 to 150,000l a day, which comes from our filtration plant in Adelaide,” Gangat said.
The NPO’s four trucks — two carrying 7,000l each, one carrying 6,000l and another that carries 20,000l — are run by eight employees.
Delivery is daily.
They also assist in flood disaster areas and recently were on the scene in storm-flooded Nelson Mandela Bay Metro.
Gangat, who joined the NPO in 2019, says his day starts at 6am when his cellphone starts ringing. The trucks are on the road or in communities until 9pm.
He lists places which rely on their water: 30 schools including six in Makhanda, 20 clinics and hospitals combined, a police station in Adelaide and several communities and farmers.
“There’s areas like Nkanini, Khayelitsha and Joza in Makhanda that don’t have water at all. They depend on water tanks.”
The work feels meaningful, even uplifting.
“My team and I feel happy and overwhelmed with emotions with the work we do.
“If there’s no work to do we feel sad. It’s exciting to help people with water and they always say we are their lifesavers, give their thanks, and say they depend on us.
“Some of them say they have requested municipalities for ages to fix infrastructure or send water tankers but don’t get any response.”
The foundation’s borehole project started in 2021 when communities ran out of water.
The foundation pumps one million litres of water a day and runs it through a filtration system before filling the tankers.
Municipalities which have failed to provide and maintain water services for communities also get water from the project, reveals Gangat.
Zeenat Kholvadia, a teacher at Adelaide Junior Secondary, says when the school’s eight tanks supplying 700 pupils ran dry, the school quickly called the foundation.
“For a few years now we have been experiencing drought and there are other times where we have water-shedding [outages], and thanks to them we receive constant help.”
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