'We are now living the life of buckets': Dry taps leave Tshwane residents stranded

“I can’t even take a bath. They say water gives healing but we haven't had it for days now.”

These are the words of Olebogeng Motshegare, 29, from Mabopane Block B, who tested positive for Covid-19 on Tuesday — the last day she had running water.

Motshegare, like many residents in Tshwane, has been without water for days. The supply is likely to only be restored on Sunday.

“I can’t go to the water trucks to fetch water myself because I’m in isolation. Communication from the city is also pathetic because they never say when the trucks will come. My brother, who has been helping me with essentials, came back with empty buckets yesterday because the water was finished when he got there,” she said.

Motshegare said her brother had to drive about 20km to Ga-Rankuwa, where he managed to get water.

“So I’m using as little water as I can to save what my brother brought me,” she told TimesLIVE.

Another Mabopane resident, Modiegi Ngcobo, who lives in X extension about 2km from Motshegare, had to travel to Hebron, about 15km from her home, to get water.

“There were no water tankers or trucks on Tuesday and Wednesday,” she said.

Ngcobo said life without running water was very hard. “Water is life. Everything that one does requires water. We are now living the life of buckets.”

On Thursday afternoon she said the City of Tshwane did send water tanks to her block.

On Friday, the city stated it had expanded the number of stations for water tankers servicing areas affected by the disrupted water supply after a system breakdown at Rand Water’s Palmiet pump station earlier this week.

“It must be noted that the City of Tshwane’s system can only recover once the Rand Water one is back to full operation. According to Rand Water, they anticipate that the repairs at the pump station would be completed by Sunday, after which water supply would gradually return to normality,” the city said in a statement.

In Soshanguve, the situation is not any better. Joey Phahladira from Block VV said she drives to Pretoria North to get water from a relative because of non-compliance of Covid-19 regulations at one water tank station.

“People are not observing social distancing when queuing for water, while others don’t even have masks on at all. So I just told myself I'd rather carry the cost of travelling than openly going to a situation that I see is a health hazard,” she said.  

According to a resident from Ga-Rankuwa who is also affected by the water outage, those who have water in other sections of the township have taken advantage of the situation and turned into water entrepreneurs.

“In Zone 1, they have water and people sell five-litre buckets for R5 and a 20-litre bucket goes for R15,” Nkanyezi Ngcobo, who lives in Zone 2, told TimesLIVE.

“We don’t have tankers in our area and I only heard that there was a water truck in the area after it had left. Going to fetch water from another zone is a huge cost because you spend on transport and also you have to buy the water.”

Ngcobo said she was unable to prepare formula for her nine-month-old toddler or even give her a proper bath.

TimesLIVE