I know how it is like surviving without any water because I lived in Ncera and Chalumna, which are located outside East London. Taps within such rural communities have been dry for two years. Not for a week. Not for a month. Two full years!
During that period, families have had to rely on the water tankers. It costs up to R1 500 to fill a household tank. That would not only be costly in a community that is already struggling with unemployment and poverty, but it is inhuman.
Water is not a luxury. It is a constitutional right.
I have personally experienced waiting for a water tanker so that we could cook, bathe or flush a toilet. Sometimes you wait all day. Such uncertainty is a dignity killer.
Rural communities have complained on numerous occasions about what they term “water tanker mafias”, who shut down valves to exacerbate water shortages to secure their tanker businesses.
Rural communities should cease being addressed as an afterthought. If this crisis had been occurring in the wealthy suburbs, it would have been solved many years back.
Luvolwethu Ngani, Pretoria
