South Africa: Durban Residents Without Water for Eight Years Picket At City Hall

Standpipes in ward 105 have been dry since 2016

Over 100 people from ward 105 on the south coast of Durban picketed outside the city hall on Thursday, demanding tap water. They also want their ward councilor to step down.

Last month, GroundUp reported how the 5,000 households in the ward have been without tap water for eight years.

The protesters said they had tried all official avenues before approaching the Right2Know Campaign in April for help.

Right2Know provincial organiser Yolanda Yalezo said, “We were their last resort.” She said they helped the community to draft their protest memos.

Community leader Sikhumbuso Cele said organising the protest was difficult because of the cost of transport from ward 105, which is 40km away on the rural outskirts of the municipality.

Mlulama Ngcobo, from the office of the mayor, accepted the memo and said he would hand it “over to the relevant office”.

The eThekwini Municipality head of water and sanitation Ednick Msweli, at a joint media briefing with the mayor and council members on Thursday, said the estimated cost (done three years ago) for repairing the infrastructure for water reticulation would be R44-billion. He said tankers were therefore a stop-gap measure and “you are still going to have them for a while”. Tankers are withdrawn as infrastructure is repaired, he said.

And water woes in eThekwini are set to continue. The Department of Water and Sanitation and eThekwini Municipality announced “water curtailment” starting 10 October.

Mayor of Ethekwini Cyril Xaba said that the amount of water that uMngeni-uThukela Water (UUW) extracts from the Mgeni water supply system would be limited.

“This is to enable continued water availability, including during periods of below-average rainfall,” said Xaba. “The risk of not enforcing the [extraction] limit is that, should a drought occur, there would not be sufficient water in the system for uMngeni-uThukela Water to continue providing the eThekwini Municipality with a reliable water supply.”

“However, if UUW implements the gradual reduction as planned, the water supply should remain stable, even with below-average rainfall. If there is below average rainfall, any restrictions required would be more manageable”.

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