13 August 2026
Magret Mathekga has been living in an RDP house in Tshikota without water and electricity since 2021. Photo: Thembi Siaga
New state housing is being built in Tshikota, Limpopo, while people living in RDP homes built in 2021 still do not have water and electricity. GroundUp found that 100 houses in the older development do not have water and 50 of these are also without electricity.
Meanwhile, the Limpopo Department of Cooperative Governance, Human Settlements and Traditional Affairs (CoGHSTA) is spending almost R30-million on 154 new houses within the Makhado municipality.
The Makhado Local Municipality, together with the Vhembe District Municipality, is responsible for installing electricity and water.
There has been some improvement since we first visited in May, when more than 100 houses had no electricity. Since then, electricity poles have been erected, but not all the houses have been connected.
Maria Tshidada said households with water tanks pay an average of R300 a month to refill them.
“We also do not have electricity, and we don’t use candles as it is not safe,” she said.
She is unemployed and relies on the SASSA grants of her two children.
Resident Matodzi Mandeze buys water to fill containers and then carts them home.
“They gave us houses with flushing toilets but no water supply or electricity, and we also do not have proper roads,” she said.
Elderly resident Magret Mathekga said it costs R2 to R3 to buy 20 litres of untreated borehole water.
Municipal spokesperson Mpho Rathando disputed the number of households affected. He said only two of the older RDP houses lacked both water and electricity connections.
He claimed that 90% of the electrification had been completed, but that homeowners were required to open municipal accounts and submit supporting documents, which they had not done.
Residents we spoke to said they were not aware of this requirement.
Rathando did not respond to our follow-up questions.
CoGHSTA spokesperson Tsakani Baloyi said delays in installing water were linked to design upgrades requested by the district municipality, adding that the contractor would resume work under revised performance conditions.
