Residents in the south of Johannesburg stage protest after Johannesburg Water disconnected their water
LENASIA - Illegal water connections in Lenasia, south of Johannesburg, have brought the area to its knees.
Six informal settlements have been flagged for their illegal connections to the Lenasia water system, which has now been left compromised.
One of those is Phumlangashi, formally known as Univille, which is separated from Lenasia South by the Golden Highway.
Joburg Water regional manager Kagiso Manganye revealed this on 12 November, during an operation to disconnect the informal settlement.
According to Manganye, Phumlangashi has just over 16, 000 households relying on illegal supply.
“Within region G we have three systems including the Orange Farm, Lenasia and Ennerdale system. Univille is connected to the system that is coming to the Lenasia system and supplying the Lenasia side. This system gets their water supply from the Zuurbekom system which is part of Rand Water.”
“We are now sitting with a crisis because we have a high number of informal settlements within the region among those is Univille which is a major contributor to non-revenue water in terms of losses,” Manganye said.
He says the current water crisis has forced them to isolate the reservoir between 1pm to 5pm, to help the system to recover and build up storage.
This ultimately affects paying households.
Among those who expressed their frustration is a 60-year-old woman, who complained that they have been battling erratic supply on a daily basis.
“We have to store water in buckets just to flush toilets. When the supply ends, we wait for days without knowing when it will return. This issue of water has been going on for years.”
She says despite inconsistent service, her monthly bill exceeds R5,000, a cost she finds unjust given the poor supply and low water pressure.
Ridwan Mohammed, another resident, noted that the water issue is not new, and has persisted for years, driving some households to dig boreholes or install JoJo tanks.
“People are desperate and even resorting to stealing taps. It’s unfair that we’re denied a basic need like water,” he said.
But for informal settlement residents staying at Phumlangashi, the issue is one of survival.
Nomalanga Khoza explained, “We voted for our local councillor, but we feel abandoned. We know that we have connected illegally but we have been waiting for water for so long that we had to make a plan for ourselves. Now its bad because we have been disconnected that means we must go back to water tankers which often has dirty water.”
For now, the operation to cut off illegal water connections in informal settlements has been called off, after residents started throwing rocks at Joburg Water officials.
Johannesburg Metropolitan Department (JMPD) officers were then forced to respond by firing rubber bullets to disperse the angry crowd.
According to Joburg Water spokeswoman Nombuso Shabalala, the utility will discuss a way forward regarding their strategy to continue with disconnections,
following the violent incident.
By Zandile Khumalo