16 January 2025
Instead of being in school, these children had to queue for water in Joe Slovo informal settlement in Komani. Photos: Nombulelo Damba-Hendrik
People in Komani, Eastern Cape, say they experience persistent water outages. As school opened this week, many learners did not attend as they were unable to bathe in the morning or had to go to queue for water for their families.
Water outages started in September last year and now last for weeks at a time.
Chris Hani District Municipality spokesperson Thobeka Mqamelo said 14 wards are affected. However, low-lying areas in some of these wards, as well as the centre of town, Westbourne, Sandringham, Ezibeleni and Queendustria, are gravity-fed and seldom experience outages.
Mqamelo said the Komani Water Treatment Works is supplied by two dams, but the level in Bonkolo Dam is now below abstraction point, and Waterdown Dam cannot meet the demand as it also supplies Whittlesea town.
The inflow rate to the treatment works dropped from 30 to 16 megalitres per day. After a major pipeline leak was fixed, it rose to 17.8 megalitres.
Ward committee member No-red Mndlangu said they have been without water for two weeks. There are two water tanks but they have not been filled for years. On Wednesday, people started queueing at 4am at a standpipe that supplies 400 families. There was water at about 6am for just 30 minutes.
Amile Mbengo, 16, said she had waited on Sunday for hours for the water truck. When it finally arrived, people had started fighting and the driver drove off.
Mavis Zila, 58, said, “I’m old and sick, but I’m forced to walk kilometres around these areas looking for water. We are struggling. Today, I got water from the stadium. I was lucky. I had to carry a 20-litre bucket on my head. Those who came after me didn’t get water. The truck came last week Friday. It’s almost a week now and we are still waiting.”
Sigingqini resident Sibulele Mnyenzi said elderly people who cannot queue have to use their social grants to pay R50 to get a 20-litre bucket of water.
In 2014, the district municipality budgeted R546-million for the Xonxa Dam bulk water project, meant to be completed in 2018. Mqamelo said work on pumps and pipeline is underway and is expected to be completed by March.
On Monday, residents marched to the municipal offices.
Mayor Lusanda Sizani told them that various processes were in place, including rationing, additional tankers and a dedicated truck for each ward, and drilling boreholes.
Residents of Khayelitsha in Komani wait for a truck to deliver water. Hours later, the truck had not arrived. Residents did not want to speak to GroundUp as they feared they would lose job opportunities in the municipality’s public works programme.