Despite the good midsummer rainfall, many Makhado residents have yet again been left high and dry by the Vhembe District Municipality (VDM).

Last week the VDM took a precautionary step in warning residents in and around Louis Trichardt of possible water shortages. Their warning became a reality and more than a week later, residents found themselves without a single drop of water.

Initially, a fault was detected on a raw water pump at the Albasini Water Treatment Plant. At the time, the spokesperson for the VDM, Mr Matodzi Ralushai, said that bearings on the pump needed replacing. The pump feeds water to the treatment plant, from where it is pumped to reservoirs in and around Louis Trichardt.

On Monday morning, however, residents woke up to taps that still contained little to no water at all. Late afternoon, this faulty pump was eventually fixed. The repair work had been delayed because the necessary ordered parts had not arrived in time.

Residents’ excitement that the pump was in working order again were, however, short-lived. Just as the supply of water to town was about to resume, pipe bursts caused massive leaks on the Albasini pipeline to town. This brought the pumping of water to town to a halt once more.

By Wednesday, repair work on the pipeline was still being conducted, with water shortages expected to continue until Friday. This was, according to the local branch of the Democratic Alliance (DA), an extremely optimistic estimate by the VDM of their capabilities.

When the taps started to run dry and the VDM’s emergency trucks were nowhere to be found, the DA came to the rescue. In partnership with Lunaka Earth-Moving Equipment (a Louis Trichardt-based company) and Limpopo Dairy, they could deliver water to those residents left stranded over the weekend. VDM's trucks were only spotted delivering water in and around town on Monday afternoon.

With every telephonic enquiry, VDM's representatives were extremely apologetic about the continued water shortages. “We are really working as hard as we can to fix the situation,” said another VDM spokesperson, Mr Moses Shibambu. He confirmed that the executive mayor, Cllr Florance Radzilani, had visited the contractors on site to urge them on.

This, however, did nothing for residents’ tensions, which were running high. Understandably so as it has been a while since water shortages have continued over a period of several consecutive days. Especially the poor are hardest hit, mainly because they cannot afford to buy water at water outlets. There are also other residents who decided to cash in on the water shortage by selling water from their boreholes, with prices averaging R200 per 1 000 litres.  

VDM’s failure to restore the continuous water supply to Makhado has sparked fears that the same will happen in Louis Trichardt as the recent violent service delivery protests in the Malumulele area. This area is currently, according to Shibambu, suffering just as much as residents of Louis Trichardt. He said that the VDM had already urged local business owners to help alleviate the problem by drilling boreholes out of their own pockets.

When it was pointed out that, by law, it is the VDM’s responsibility to supply water, Shibambu explained that their request was merely an interim attempt to alleviate water shortages to that area. “It is not so much budgetary constraints on the part of the VDM, but rather that the tender process to get these boreholes completed is time-consuming,” he explained.

In the meantime, the local DA indicated that they would continue to deliver water throughout the week, targeting schools, clinics, residents and local businesses in the area, until the regular water supply has been restored, hopefully by the end of the week. The Louis Trichardt branch of AfriForum also finally broke their silence this week and indicated that they were heading back to court. “We have been frustrated in recent weeks by a directive from head office that, in order to guarantee successful legal proceedings on an urgent basis, we need to prove beyond reasonable doubt that the town has a continuous water service delivery interruption for more than seven days. The current water crisis that we are experiencing this week has given us that,” said local AfriForum chair Mr Wally Schultz.

Schultz and his deputy chairman, Mr Corné Smith, were advised at the end of last year by their head office that it would be a waste of resources to continue with a legal action that was not based on urgency. “With the current water crisis now entering its eighth consecutive day, we can move forward on an emergency basis to qualify for an urgent court date,” said Schultz on Tuesday. The court application will demand that the VDM fix Louis Trichardt’s boreholes.