{"id":165897,"date":"2020-09-16T05:37:18","date_gmt":"2020-09-16T03:37:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/article\/700-residents-share-two-water-tanks-eastern-cape-village\/"},"modified":"2020-09-16T05:37:18","modified_gmt":"2020-09-16T03:37:18","slug":"700-residents-have-a-litre-of-water-per-day-in-eastern-cape-village","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/700-residents-have-a-litre-of-water-per-day-in-eastern-cape-village\/","title":{"rendered":"700 residents have a litre of water per day in Eastern Cape village"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"article_body\">\n<p><a class=\"bigger-image\" href=\"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/media\/uploads\/images\/photographers\/Buziwe%20Nocuze\/khwanyana-bn-20200914.jpeg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Photo of a man pointing to a dry river bed\" class=\"warn_big\" data-pagespeed-url-hash=\"3697599014\" src=\"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/700-residents-have-a-litre-of-water-per-day-in-eastern-cape-village.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"caption\">A villager from Khwanyana shows the dry river where they used to get water. Photo: Buziwe Nocuze<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>About 700 villagers in Khwanyana outside Port St Johns share two 5,000-litre water tanks for 14 days at a time.<\/li>\n<li>Alternative water supplies are expensive and far away to access.<\/li>\n<li>The ward councillor says he has done all he can but he knows people are suffering.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<hr>\n<p>More than 700 residents in Khwanyana village, about 40km outside Port St Johns, Eastern Cape, share just two 5,000-litre water tanks. According to the ward councillor as well as residents the tanks are filled irregularly, sometimes once every two weeks, which comes to just over one litre of municipal water per person per day.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe had a water crisis way before Covid-19 \u2026 People are not stressing about water to wash their hands but to cook and drink,\u201d said resident Nomfuneko Sawule.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe are not doing what the president said [washing hands],\u201d said a resident. \u201cNot because we don\u2019t want to, but because we do not have water.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Sawule said they need more tanks and they needed them to be filled at least twice a week.<\/p>\n<p>Many children do not go to school because they have not been able to bathe and their uniforms are dirty.<\/p>\n<p>Mthobeli Gwiba said people pay between R200 and R300 to get water, hiring a vehicle to go to Tombo about 20 kilometres away, where there is still municipal water supply. Unemployed people cannot afford this.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNo one fetches water for free. They all want the money,\u201d said Lulama Sajini. \u201cPeople who own donkeys are charging R60 for 20 litres of water [fetched from a nearby area].\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Several residents said their ward councillor needs to do much more.<\/p>\n<p>Port St Johns Local Municipality Ward 3 Councillor Zolile Maqina (ANC) said, \u201cI know that the two tanks are not enough for the whole community but there is nothing else that I can do \u2026 It will not happen that the community gets water every week. It is not possible.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He said Khwanyana was lucky with two tanks; other areas only had one tank.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cResidents need to take some blame,\u201d said Maqina. He said the Lundini Ludalasi water project, started in 2014 for Khwanyana, Ludalasi, Mngazana and part of Mbenengeni village, failed because the pump station was vandalised and taps were stolen. A security guard was hired to work at night, but people started stealing the water infrastructure during the day.<\/p>\n<p>Maqina said people had also lost livestock because of the water shortage.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe are pleading with anyone who can assist us to come forward before we all die, because no one can live without water,\u201d said Maqina.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div id=\"article-copyright\">\n<p>\u00a9 2020 GroundUp. This article is licensed under a <a href=\"http:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-nd\/4.0\/\" rel=\"license\">Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>You may republish this article, so long as you credit the authors and GroundUp, and do not change the text. Please include a link back to the original article.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/700-residents-have-a-litre-of-water-per-day-in-eastern-cape-village.jpg\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/\">Source: GroundUp<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A villager from Khwanyana shows the dry river where they used to get water. Photo: Buziwe Nocuze About 700 villagers in Khwanyana outside Port St Johns share two 5,000-litre water tanks for 14 days at a time. Alternative water supplies are expensive and far away to access. The ward councillor says he has done all [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":165898,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[9928],"tags":[28001],"class_list":{"0":"post-165897","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-groundup","8":"tag-groundup","9":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/700-residents-have-a-litre-of-water-per-day-in-eastern-cape-village.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165897","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=165897"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165897\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/165898"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=165897"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=165897"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=165897"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}