Villagers of the Eastern Cape will trust the weather long before any airy promises of piped water made by government officials and politicians.
In a poignant irony, the man who leads the province, premier Oscar Mabuyane, as a small boy carried water from a stream to his village home at Ngcobo.
Nokubonga Sidima, a villager of Mahlamvu village in the Gogozayo area in Mqanduli, said: “I don’t know the taste of tap water. I have never had it.”
What she has had are plenty of promises — every one of them still hanging.
They — along with most of the other 578,330 households in the province with no access to piped water — turn to streams and rivers to survive.
“We have never had tap water here. We are yearning for it. Other villages around here too. We all fetch water from the river.
“We are only saved from that when it rains. We were last promised that we will have piped water in 2018,” Sidima said.
In Mantlaneni village outside Lusikisiki, a Dispatch team saw children as young as seven hauling 5l containers of water drawn from a large, rectangular, cement-walled well next to a stream.
A nine-year-old boy said fetching water after school had to be done three times a day.
He was walking alongside his 5-year-old sister, who was carrying a 2l container.
“I also started going to the river at her age,” he said.
He dreads winter for the pre-dawn trek there to wash before school.
“It’s so dark and sometimes there is frost. I don’t want to live like this any more. I wish things could change,” he said.
All Onesimo Manda, 29, has ever known is water of uncertain quality from streams she shares with animals.
And yet she sees something positive in her situation: “We are so lucky because it does not dry up in winter.”
She was chatting as she and other women did their laundry at a well named Mtenje.
When it rains hard, the pit latrines at the school overflow into the stream supplying the well.
“Our young men already know they have to clean the well by removing all the water before we can use it again,” she said.
As in many other villages, animals also drink from this well.
There is a river, but it is too rocky and steep for the elderly. They hire young girls to haul water, paying them from their meagre social grants.
Mabuyane said he receives complaints daily about water access problems.
He liaises with the mayors and MECs and responds to the complaints.
“Sometimes people blow things out of proportion and say they have had no water since forever,” he said.
“I have seen such areas and even the reports of water affairs [water and sanitation] in geo-mapping to show where these areas are.
“We are looking at these areas and prioritising them. But the key is to first deal with the bulk water supply, and only then issues of water reticulation.
“There are dams that will soon be starting construction and dams that are currently under design.”
The province has six or more rivers that flow all year round — yet still people do not have access to this water, he said.
“We are trying to arrest the situation we inherited and find a good way of getting water to our people,” Mabuyane said.
Of his childhood, he said: “I only saw piped water if I followed my father to where he was working.
“The government of the ANC has done a lot to move our people from that kind of situation to where we are today.
"It’s a challenge but we are dealing with it slowly.
“The Eastern Cape has a huge infrastructure backlog. It’s a fact.
"We will not wake up tomorrow and find a dramatic change.
“It is going to take some time to clear.
"But we are developing plans to ensure we tackle the issue head-on.”
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