Makhanda water crisis deepens

Makhanda’s long-standing water crisis reached a critical point last week when the Makana Municipality’s last remaining pump at its vital Howieson’s Poort pump station ended up in a muddy ditch while on its way to Johannesburg for repairs.

Rhodes University students and residents who took to the streets to protest the dire water supply crisis last week had no idea things could get any worse.

But, as supply dams filled up and overflowed due to good rains, less and less water has reached the city’s residents, many of whom have not had water flowing from their taps for more than a month.

The rest of the residents consider themselves lucky if the municipality meets its own stipulated one-day-on-twodays-off water policy it introduced to try to manage the water supply crisis.

And it seems entirely incapable of fixing the mess it created, businessman and Makhanda Business Forum chair Richard Gaybba says.

Photos of the truck in a ditch with the enormous blue pump on its load-bed went viral on social media and messenger groups last week.

Some say the truck had slid off the road into bushes at the Thomas Baines reserve outside Makhanda on Saturday last week and remained there for four days.

A photograph showing the bright blue pump resting on the truck’s lopsided load-bed was taken on Wednesday.

However, the municipality says the accident happened on Wednesday and not Saturday.

The Makana Residents’ Association revealed at its AGM last week that the municipality had thrown in the towel on its own attempts to repair the single remaining pump.

The pump was dispatched to Johannesburg, leaving the pump room — which should have at least three pumps — empty.

Gayyba said residents were furious and businesses were struggling to cope.

“It is going to be the final nail [in the coffin] for many small businesses.”

Makana municipal manager Phumelelo Kate said the municipality was doing its best to supply as much water as it could from its other water treatment works, James Kleynhans, but conceded this was not meeting demand.

He said water would be trucked to areas left without.