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Residents of Mahlathi, a village outside Giyani, say they have been forced to use contaminated water for daily needs because of the recent floods in the area.
Thandi Mathebula and her family of seven rely on water they collect from a tap at the nearby church. But last week the water was unusable.
“The water tasted salty, and when it came out, [of the tap] it looked like cow urine with soap in it,” she tells Health-e News.
Mathebula says that after she had drunk some of the water, she immediately started experiencing flu-like symptoms, causing her to cough and have a severe headache. The illness lasted all week.
“I felt like I would die without telling my family,” she says. “But now I feel fine, I don’t know whether my body will react later.”
The family used the four 25-litre buckets of water they had collected to bathe and wash laundry. Mathebula says they are already struggling to make ends meet, and the water situation is making things worse as they have to buy water for cooking and to drink.
Mathebula’s frustration is shared by another resident, Sesana Thapelo Mashale, who says her family had no choice because they don’t have water.
“We usually rely on rainwater, but it’s stopped raining now. We’re afraid to drink the tap water,” she says. “The water smells like it has grease and some sort of chemicals.”
This experience is echoed by Loveness Mathebula who says the water from the tap at the church was red like blood, but she filled three buckets anyway.
“We don’t have water, so we use what we can get,” she said.
She used the water to bathe on Wednesday and wash dishes on Thursday. By Friday, it was smelling so bad that she threw it out. She got scared and decided not to use it again.
Later that week, Loveness used borehole water to rinse the dishes because she was worried the tap water was contaminated. Her husband used the red water to bathe, but her mother-in-law didn’t touch it because she was afraid. Instead, she used borehole water that they bought with money they could hardly afford to bathe and to cook.
Residents say operators with boreholes don’t have a standard fee; the charges range anywhere from R3 to R27, depending on the size of the container they want to fill up. People pay up to R810 to fill up a 270litre container.
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Community members are calling on authorities to address the water crisis in Mahlathi. They want clean water and an end to the suffering.
Health-e News contacted the Limpopo Provincial health department, and spokesperson Neil Shikwambana, who directed questions to the Mopani District Municipality’s environmental health section.
“We are not aware of that issue. We will send our water quality assurance team to take samples for testing. What we can confirm is that there is no contamination from the source,” says Mopani District Municipality spokesperson Odas Ngobeni. – Health-e News
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