Dineo Moteka, 36, waits for an hour to fill her two 20l buckets from a spring on a hillside in QwaQwa. On her back, she carries her baby, protected from the harsh weather by a blanket.
It is a two-hour round trip for water in the Maluti-a-Phofung municipality in the eastern Free State. The municipality encompasses the towns of Harrismith, Kestell and Phuthaditjhaba.
Some days Moteka does the trip three times for her and her three children.
The municipality declared the area a disaster zone a month ago after five years of drought with the Fika-Patso Dam, the area’s water supply, dipping to 4%. Locals say they have been struggling for water for 15 years.
The municipality’s councillor for infrastructure, Ditaba Nhlapo, said 85% of the almost 1-million people in the area do not have running water at home.
Now that rivers have run dry, 17 municipal water trucks, each carrying 40,000l of drinking water, drive from Sterkfontein Dam, 20 minutes away, three times a day. The councillor for finance, Mandla Tshabalala, says this costs R70,000 a month.
Homes in the northern part of the municipality can wait up to three weeks for a truck to arrive. Tshabalala says 50 trucks are needed. The municipality was placed under administration last year, so money is short.
Gift of the Givers has begun drilling three boreholes that are expected to each yield 60,000l of drinking water a day. It has already completed one but the driller, Martyn Landmann, said the community was on the brink of a humanitarian crisis.
He said the area in QwaQwa was one of the worst hit. “Even if it rains now it will not be enough,” he said.
“The rivers are gone and the big textile factories are shutting down. People have no work and there are social issues beginning to take hold. They look to the government to help, but it isn’t a political situation here, it’s environmental.”
A second electric pump was installed at the Tseki clinic in Phuthaditjhaba. It was done in collaboration with the Free State Black Business Forum and the local chief, Moremoholo Motebang Mopeli. The clinic treats about 300 patients a day.
A nurse at the clinic, Ida Miya, said there had not yet been any drought-related illnesses, like diarrhoea and dehydration.
Miya and colleague Thabo Mofokeng said the water from their taps ran brown and had a foul smell, so they bought bottled water.
Meriam Vilikazi, 40, lives with her elderly parents and daughters Rethabile, 9, and Amohelang, 2, near the completed borehole.
She said tempers often flared as people waiting for water trucks became desperate.
“Sometimes people don’t see the trucks for three weeks. When they think one place gets more water [than they do], they block the roads with burning tyres, glass and rocks to divert the trucks to their roads.”
Tempers often flared as people waiting for water trucks became desperate
Thabitha Ntlohla, 66, said she had collected water from the river all her life before it dried up.
When the Sunday Times visited the area this week, queues of people with buckets of every size and colour could be seen along the main roads.
At dusk Lebohang Maleka, 26, and wife Motloung, 25, took turns pushing their son Tebello, 3, in a wheelbarrow with their empty water buckets to a natural spring. They had waited an entire day for a water truck to arrive, but in vain.
When they got to the spring, Phillmon Mahlobo, 40, was using a jug to scoop clear water into his buckets.
He has worked in hotels all over the country but returned to his hometown to look after his mother.
“I can’t remember when last the water truck came ... I’ve never experienced a drought like this.”
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