The Limpopo village where residents drink water alongside animals
POLOKWANE — Residents of a remote Limpopo village say they will not vote until they receive running water after more than a decade of dry communal taps has left some families walking almost two kilometres to collect discoloured water from a puddle also used by animals.
In Phugwane village near Malamulele, residents told Eyewitness News they use the water for drinking, cooking, bathing and washing clothes. Cow dung was visible near the water source during EWN’s visit, while residents said the puddle had effectively become one of their only options for water.
The conditions have pushed some residents to connect the failure of basic service delivery directly to the coming local government elections.
Sixty-six-year-old Grace Chauke told EWN residents were tired of voting while continuing to live without water, saying they would withhold their votes until the community received a reliable supply. Nearby, 70-year-old Maria Maluleke drank directly from a bottle she had filled with the murky water and said residents had little choice but to use it every day.
The crisis is particularly striking because communal taps already line the streets of Phugwane. EWN reported that none produced water during its visit, while boreholes seen in the village were also not working.
Vhembe District Municipality has acknowledged the problem.
Municipal spokesperson Mbhoni Manganyi said there was insufficient water available from existing sources. Two boreholes had previously been drilled to supplement supply, but one did not produce enough water to meet demand. The municipality said it was continuing groundwater exploration to identify additional viable sources, which could then be connected to the existing reservoir and reticulation system.
The latest account is not the first time Phugwane residents have raised concerns about their water supply.
In March, GroundUp reported that villagers said they were still waiting for a borehole they had been promised before the 2024 elections. At the time, residents were collecting water from fountains in the bush and transporting containers home using wheelbarrows.
The municipality said then that damage to a pipeline caused by illegal connections had affected seven villages, including Phugwane, Madonsi, Green Farm and Nghomunghomu. It said water tankers were being dispatched to Phugwane, although residents told GroundUp they had not received a tanker delivery since the previous October.
Phugwane is also not an isolated case in Limpopo.
Residents in other parts of the province have raised similar complaints about unreliable or absent water supplies. In May, GroundUp reported that residents of Chavani and surrounding villages remained without running water despite completion of a R486 million bulk water system intended to serve communities in the area. The Vhembe municipality cited vandalism and insufficient water availability among the reasons the system was not yet operational.
Water delivery has become sufficiently contentious across Limpopo that residents participating in recent parliamentary hearings on the Water Services Amendment Bill called for stronger accountability when municipalities and service providers fail to provide reliable services. Parliament says the proposed legislation is intended to address problems including unreliable water and sanitation services, inadequate infrastructure maintenance, declining water quality and weak enforcement.
For Phugwane residents, however, the immediate problem is considerably more basic. More than a decade after water stopped flowing reliably from communal taps, people are still pushing wheelbarrows into the surrounding fields to collect water they share with livestock.
The municipality says further underground water sources are being investigated. Until a viable source is found and connected, residents say the puddle remains part of their daily search for something that should already be coming from the taps outside their homes.
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