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The efforts to solve the Mopani District Municipality’s water woes have taken many turns, including the squandering of hundreds of millions
Early in 2014, Nkhensani Hospital managers frantically dispatched nurses to Ngobe, a village outside Giyani, Limpopo.
There was an outbreak of cholera. Many babies were suffering from diarrhoea, and were vomiting and limp. There were reports that four people had died. The water that residents drew from the Klein Letaba River was identified as the cause.
Five years before that, the Mopani District Municipality, which oversees the towns of Giyani, Tzaneen and Phalaborwa, had been declared a disaster area because of recurrent and chronic water shortages.
More than 150 boreholes, which supplied Ngobe and many other surrounding villages, had dried up. Enterprising criminals had stripped off the transformers and pumps to sell as scrap metal.
With no other choice, Ngobe’s villagers were forced to survive on water from the river.
The source of Ngobe’s problems was the Giyani Municipality’s waste water treatment plant, which had collapsed because of years of neglect. Officials discharged raw sewage into the Klein Letaba, exposing Ngobe’s residents, 15km downstream, to deadly waterborne diseases.
Ngobe resident Nina Masia’s daughter Phathutshedzo, now four years old, nearly died in the outbreak.
Two weeks ago, Masia was one of more than 200 residents who gathered under the shade of trees in the sprawling compound of their chief to listen to updates from officials from Lepelle Northern Water and the department of water and sanitation on the status of projects aimed at addressing the water shortages.
Water and Sanitation Minister Nomvula Mokonyane conceived the project shortly after she was appointed in 2014.
Masia told City Press she was grateful to Khato Civils, the main contractor enlisted by Lepelle in September 2014, for solving Mopani’s water woes.
“I really thank Khato Civils. We had to go to the Letaba River to do laundry and get water. I had to push a wheelbarrow for two hours, with a baby on my back, to get water. Things are much better now; I have water in my own yard.”
She smiled conspiratorially, adding that although it was through an illegal connection that she now has water in her yard, she was grateful nevertheless as it was Khato Civils that brought water into the main pipes from which she is stealing.
Remembering how her daughter almost died in the cholera outbreak, Masia said: “The hospital sent the nurses to take stool and urine samples to test for cholera. They also brought us oral rehydration therapy, and educated us about cholera and diarrhoea.
“I thank them for helping to save my baby. We used to share water with animals in the river. I know of a mortuary that washes corpses and then discharges the dirty water into the same river from which we drink.”
About 15km away, a pungent smell pervades the now-functional Giyani waste water treatment plant, which lies wedged between two imposing hills.
Ndivhuho Mulibana, a project manager for Lepelle Northern Water, says: “This smell is nothing. When we first came here in 2014, this place was stinking. There was sh*t all over the place. Nothing was working.
“When we started here, the sh*t was discharged directly into the river and the people drank the water as it was. The existing plant was dysfunctional. It had to be revived.”
To resuscitate the plant, the contractors have to procure and install complex waste water purification systems, including inlet works, pumps, biological filters, generators and transformers.
The company imported a turnkey purification plant from Germany and installed it to augment the refurbished one. The new plant processes about 4.5 megalitres of waste water daily, says engineer Eddy Sikaala.
Sikaala says the new plant will be expanded further to process 14 megalitres of sewage a day. The design is already in place, as are long-term plans to expand it even further.
Most of Giyani and its surrounding villages get water from the Nsami Dam. The water-purification plant in Nsami was built in 1974 and it could only pump about 14 megalitres a day. This was woefully inadequate for a growing town like Giyani and, like the sewage works, the plant also collapsed.
Khato Civils’ first assignment was to refurbish the old plant, and increase its capacity from 14 megalitres a day to 30 megalitres. They then built a new plant that can pump an additional 7 megalitres a day.
Lepelle’s acting chief executive, Phineas Legodi, says: “When we came here, there was no water. There is now water in every village. If bulk water does not reach a village, there are boreholes.”
But when City Press visited Giyani town last month, residents in Sections E and F complained that they went without water for days on end, and those lucky enough to have their own boreholes were selling to their neighbours fortunate enough to be able to pay.
But in Giyani’s villages, modern boreholes surrounded by palisade fencing to prevent theft abound. The contractors are also replacing 380km of asbestos pipes.
When City Press visited the area last week, large trenchers, imported from Spain, trucks, payloaders, excavators and water tankers were hard at work, digging trenches and installing pipes that are expected to last 50 years. The project is scheduled to be completed next year.
If all goes according to plan, cholera may be a thing of the past for the people of Mopani.
