VILLAGE TAPS DRY FOR SEVEN YEARS
Municipality diver ted water to mine Report fingers services culprits
A “SECRET” water deal between the Madibeng local municipality and a mining company had cut off more than 25 000 people of Majakaneng village in North West from the water supply for seven years.
Community leaders accused the municipality of colluding with Australianbased International Ferro Metals (IFM) – a mine situated about 7km from Majakaneng – in a multi-million rand deal that guaranteed the mine received purified water while villagers were cut off.
As a result, since 2007 most villagers had to rely on the few residents that had installed boreholes for water, which they sell for R1 per 25-litre container.
Ironically, in 2007 the Madibeng local municipality began installing water meters in all the households, which have now become white elephants.
Also, the water trucks from the Bojanala district municipality that used to supply water in Majakaneng surprisingly stopped doing so in 2011.
Four people have been killed by police in the ongoing water protest at nearby Mothutlung. The protest began two weeks ago over the shortage of water.
The mine is paying, but we re suffering
Lazarus Nkhomo, ward 7 councillor, said water was available at the Majakaneng, Modderspruit and Bapong villages and was being pumped from a nearby reservoir.
“That water was already not enough to support all the three places as they were growing rapidly. We only got water in the evenings, ” said Nkhomo.
The installation of an extra pipe to feed water into the mine in 2007 posed new problems when suddenly all the taps in parts of the three villages started running dry.
“We learned about the mine water deal but the municipality told us at the time that the mine would get raw water and not purified water, which was not the case. We don’t know how the decision to connect the mine to our water system was made,” said Nkhomo.
Anderson Banda, a former ward councillor and a member of the South African National Civics Organisation in Majakaneng, said the decision to install a pipe to carry water to the mine was already taken when he took office in 2006.
“Basically, I don’t know how that deal was made with the mine. The municipality kept telling me that the problem was low pressure from the pipe, which is caused by the big demand for water. We know the mine is paying for the water, but our people are suffering.”