Water crisis deepens across Free State, North West, Limpopo

Communities in QwaQwa have contended with prolonged water challenges for the better part of a decade. While drought was historically the driving factor, infrastructure problems seem to be the order of the day in the rural, mountainous region in the eastern Free State.

In Phuthaditjhaba, Daily Maverick stumbled upon a narrow stream where residents had gathered, armed with 25-litre containers, wheelbarrows and sometimes even trolleys for at least two weeks to collect water from a pipe protruding from the ground.

Vincent Sefo, an employee at a local construction company, said that while residents had not had water for two weeks, the municipality had not given them a reason for the interrupted supply.

“Nobody has come to us and said there is a burst pipe or anything. I have been coming here every day to collect water for the workers so that they can have drinking water as they are working,” Sefo said.

Even the people who sell water to residents during outages collect the valuable resource from the stream-side pipe, he added.

As the sun began to set behind the Maluti Mountains that surround Phuthaditjhaba, more residents began to gather beside the stream, patiently waiting their turn to collect water.

On the outskirts of Giyani, Limpopo, the residents of Mahlathi and Guwala villages are no strangers to trekking long distances, sometimes for hours, just to collect water.

In 2024, in the build-up to the election, Daily Maverick visited the area to speak to residents about their concerns ahead of what became one of South Africa’s most contested polls. Access to water was chief among their concerns, and we witnessed elderly women pushing heavy wheelbarrows on unpaved roads to collect water.

Two years later, a similar scene unfolded, as though those villages were suspended in time.

“It’s been a long time that we have to come to these taps to collect water. We have pipes inside our yards, but water never comes out. We live very far, so we have to walk long distances,” a young woman, who wished not to be named, said.

In the aftermath of the deadly floods that hit regions of Limpopo, Mpumalanga and KwaZulu-Natal, residents of Mahlathi Village reported foul-smelling, rust-coloured water that they suspected was contaminated.

When Daily Maverick visited the area in February, the taps had run dry. Tinswalo Tshabalala showed us the water she had saved.

“I used the water to bathe and wash dishes because there was nothing else we could use,” Tsabalala said.