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<\/a><\/p>\nOn Saturday in Chris Hani, KwaNobuhle, people came with wheelbarrows, shopping trolleys and wheelie bins to collect as much water as they could from a Jojo tank.<\/p>\n
Fundiswa Tsotsa, who stood in a queue with over 50 people, said, \u201cOn Friday night I left this queue at 10pm without water. This morning the queue started at 4am, but now it is 9am, and I\u2019m still far from the tank because each person brings a lot of containers.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSince February our water taps have been dry,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
She said the municipality then put up two 5,000-litre Jojo tanks and filled them with water from trucks. But she complained that for the past three weeks the supply has been unreliable and one tank was removed.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor three to four days the tanker does not supply water,\u201d she said. \u201cWe are about 5,000 households here in Chris Hani. But the tanker today only delivered 2,500 litres. The driver said he couldn\u2019t fill up the [Jojo] because there were many areas without water,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are really desperate for water. Most of us here are unemployed and we survive on social grants. When this tank is empty, we buy five-litres of water from the shops for R6 in order to cook. But for my family of four that is not enough.\u201d<\/p>\n
Twenty-year-old Anathi Gqeshe was busy filling 30 two-litre bottles for his family of seven. \u201cThis is exhausting,\u201d he said. \u201cSince February I have been fetching water like this. Three of my siblings need water to bath and go to school and others to work. I have passed my matric but I don\u2019t have time to look for a job because this water crisis has put our lives on hold.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cEveryone here brings a lot of containers because there is no guarantee that we will get water tomorrow. Washing is piling up at home. It is difficult to flush the toilet,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Half a kilometre from the Jojo tank, we found more than 60 people queuing next to a vandalised RDP house to collect water from a broken water pipe. They were from RDP houses located on higher ground. The abandoned RDP house, on lower ground, has water while they do not. People queue there from as early as 4am. They bend and clamp the severed pipe to control the flow.<\/p>\n On Friday in Booysens Park, Gqeberha, we found women in pyjamas doing laundry. They said they filled their buckets at 2am. \u201cWe only get water from 1am \u2013 by 5am the taps are dry again,\u201d said Phumeza Solani.<\/p>\n The women told GroundUp that the water tanker deliveries had become unreliable in the past three months, sometimes absent for four days. \u201cWhen it comes, people push one another in order to fill dozens of their buckets,\u201d said Solani.<\/p>\n The women also complained about the quality of the water and said it stained white clothes.<\/p>\n Nobuhle Futshane, who has a 20-month-old baby, said, \u201cI am no longer making baby formula with the water from our taps or the tankers because they cause my baby\u2019s stomach to run. The water looks dirty and I decided to buy water from the shops in order to drink and cook.\u201d<\/p>\n Zandile Grootboom said Vastrap informal settlement residents chase them away from the communal standpipes.<\/p>\n \u201cAt 10pm daily I fill up my buckets and two-litre containers with water because the people of Vastrap don\u2019t want us to make long queues at their communal standpipes. They say we will make their taps dry,\u201d said Grootboom.<\/p>\n GroundUp visited four dams that supply the municipality \u2013 Loerie, Kouga, Churchill and Impofu. We were denied access to Groendal Dam.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n\n
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