“We need water and proper roads” - Magangeni village

The lack of water continues to affect more and more residents in the Makhado municipal area. Although the municipality is trying to bring water tankers to villages, some residents feel that the water which tankers bring once in a week is not enough.

The other problem affecting most villages is bad main roads in the villages. In Magangeni village, near Elim, residents and motorists have to walk on a slippery, potholed and stone-riddled road. Limpopo Mirror visited Magangeni on a foggy Saturday afternoon.

The deputy chairperson for the local Sanco, Ms Ponani Makhubele, said that they had tried through all avenues to reach and have the Makhado Municipality listen to the problems affecting their community.

“Our municipality has never listened to us or acted on what we had presented to them,” Makhubele said. “We have no water here, and our main road is bad. They just sent officials to assess the road each time we had complained about it, and nothing happened after that.”

A woman, with a child strapped to her back, was seen walking up the road with a blue bucket of water on her head. She walked for two and a half kilometres to her friend's place. “I am delivering this water to my friend, who does not have any at her home,” she said, and declined to give her name. “My friend needs to cook. She hasn't eaten since yesterday because she had no water to cook.”

Headman Patrick Mahunyu of Magangeni Shihlobyeni said that people continued to suffer from a lack of basic services such as water, while the councillors drove posh cars and lived in luxurious houses. The municipality, said Mahunyu, was not listening to the voice of the community. “My people are suffering and dying from thirst,” he said. “We don't have water in this community. The open secret is that we have plenty of boreholes with plenty of pure water down there. Why doesn't our municipality repair and activate some of those boreholes, so that water could be available to us?”

A media inquiry was sent to Makhado Municipality's spokesperson, Mr Louis Bobodi. However, he couldn't respond to the media inquiry since he was not in the office at the time of our going to press.

News - Date: 24 April 2015

Tshifhiwa Mukwevho

Tshifhiwa Given Mukwevho was born in 1984 in Madombidzha village, not far from Louis Trichardt in the Limpopo Province. After submitting articles for roughly a year for Limpopo Mirror's youth supplement, Makoya, he started writing for the main newspaper. He is a prolific writer who published his first book, titled A Traumatic Revenge in 2011. It focusses on life on the street and how to survive amidst poverty. His second book titled The Violent Gestures of Life was published in 2014.

Email: [email protected]