Equipped with picks and spades, a group of about 30 women in Matikwe outside Durban have for the past month been digging their way to a water pipe in a bid to quench their 18-year thirst for running water.
The women represent about 50 households in the semirural area in Inanda. They know their actions are illegal but say their pleas to the municipality fell on deaf ears, prompting them to take matters into their own hands.
“The reason we’ve decided to take it upon ourselves to find water is because no-one is willing to help us,” said a community leader and affected resident.
“We apologise to the municipality, but we don’t have a choice.”
The women said they were tired of waking up at dawn to fetch water from a spring 500m away, or watching elders pay R10 to youngsters to fetch water — money they can’t afford.
“It’s only our line that doesn’t have water, others around us have it. How do residents live in those conditions for this long?”
While some households received water in the early 2000s, the supply was irregular and eventually stopped.
Fed up, the women decided to dig the trench 250m long and 1.5m deep to a source which they will connect to a communal stand pipe. They are a few weeks away from their objective.
Their attempt to access water comes as eThekwini mayor Cyril Xaba was forced to implement water curtailments last week as the city exceeded its water abstraction allowance.
Xaba blamed rapid urbanisation, ageing infrastructure in which water leaks develop, and illegal connections for the city’s high water use.
The municipality knows about this place because they send officials to do meter readings, so why don’t they help us?
— Elizabeth Mazibuko,
Elizabeth Mazibuko, who was born in the area, said they had initially had water in their homes and couldn't understand the inaction of local government authorities.
“The municipality knows about this place because they send officials to do meter readings, so why don’t they help us?” she asked.
She said water meters were installed when their houses were built in the early 2000s and water would flow, though irregularly, for a short while in those early years.
“It would come in the evening or the morning and we would go for weeks without a drop but that was almost 20 years ago and it’s been downhill since then.”
Over the years, residents have tried different ways to get water, helped by community members. Aside from fetching it at a small spring in the area, they have also been getting it from the neighbours who have water.
One neighbour connected to a pipeline to a communal stand pipe but he asked the community not to use it after it damaged the area around his house.
“Now we are digging this trench to building our own communal stand pipe that will be in a central place for all of us. It will connect to the main municipal pipe and source water from there.”
To add insult to injury, some residents have received municipal bills lately which show they are in arrears for water and sanitation services.
Nqobile Nxumalo said: “I’ve been here for nine years and I’ve never seen a drop of water from my tap but I was told I owe R4,000 for water and sanitation. I will not pay that.”
She said the promise of working taps, or effective water supply, has been a campaigning tool for almost all ward 56 councillor candidates but no-one has kept that promise.
The closest they got was after the 2016 election of Wiseman Nyaba but that relief was short-lived as he was in office only one term. “He brought us water tankers and when he saw that was unsustainable he brought a communal JoJo tank — but we woke up one day in 2018 to find it had been removed,” she said.
She said the residents were never consulted or given official reasons for the tank’s removal but they gathered from ward committee members that it was removed under the councillor’s instruction because he had been told someone was throwing babies’ nappies into it.
“I don’t think there is a community that would do that to the water they drink. The councillor should’ve met the community when he heard of that because that service was for us, the residents.”
Nyaba, the former ward councillor, said the initial municipal pipe had been designed to accommodate a certain number of households but with the increase in urban migration, more people built their own houses in the area and others connected illegally — which overwhelmed the water pump. That created more stress on the water pump and with the low pressure, it could no longer transport water upstream.
He said a bigger pipeline to cover the area was planned. “That was still at a planning stage, surveying had been done. We installed JoJo tanks as a temporary measure but that’s as far as I know because my time ended then.”
The eThekwini municipality did not respond to questions.
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