Two months without water: Tiryville crisis triggers rights probe

For nearly two months, taps in the rows of RDP houses overlooking Kariega have run dry — and residents of Tiryville say the Nelson Mandela Bay Municipality has offered almost no explanation. Families walk kilometres daily to fetch water, hauling buckets up steep paths while the crisis drags on.

“We can’t even cook properly. I can’t even remember the last time I did laundry,” said resident Marie Fleurs, speaking from the yard of her Tiryville home last week, when DA mayoral candidate Retief Odendaal visited the area and described the situation as a “man-made water crisis”.

“There is no water here. I can’t do anything at all. It’s not nice to live like this. It is really inhuman to live like this,’ Fleurs said.

Residents forced to trek over 1km for water

The houses in Tiryville were built with the promise of dignity: solid brick homes meant to replace informal structures and provide reliable access to essential services such as water and electricity. Yet, the irony is stark, with residents now trekking to neighbouring communities just to fetch water.

For some, the alternative is fetching water in Lapland, an informal settlement where there are communal taps.

“It has been two very long and difficult months that we have been without water in our taps,” Fleurs said. “We have to go to Lapland and get water from people we know there.”

According to residents, municipal water tankers rarely arrive. Instead, humanitarian organisation Gift of the Givers has stepped up to aid this desperate community.

“The municipality does not even send water trucks,” Fleurs said. “Gift of the Givers had to help us. We do not hear anything from the municipality. Nothing.”

As part of ensuring a reliable water supply in Nelson Mandela Bay, Odendaal proposed several interventions, including appointing a single drought spokesperson to provide clear and consistent public communication.

In the Fleurs household, the water outage has hit hard. Seven people, including children, share the home, and the lack of water has turned daily life upside down.

Her husband, Marius, said daily life now revolved around stretching every drop of water as far as possible and often having to recycle water.

He said: “After doing the dishes, we have to use the dishwater just to flush the toilet. There are seven of us in the house, so you have to think what kind of problems the water outage is causing for us.”

Throughout the neighbourhood, the grievances are the same. Residents no longer hold their frustration back.

Wendolene Bekkers spends each day walking nearly a kilometre to a nearby farm, hauling heavy buckets of water so her family, including two young children, can eat, drink and take a bath.

“It is far, but I have to walk because my children need to wash, they need to drink water, I need to cook and need to do laundry.

“I cannot go buy water because I do not have the money to buy water every day,” Bekkers said.

She said that the intermittent water supply over the past few months was slowly gnawing away at her dignity, and that of her family – especially her children.

“My children and I do not have clean clothes because I cannot do laundry. The council must ensure that we get our water. That is all we want,” she said.

Joseph Majoor said politicians only showed up during election season, leaving the community to fend for itself when basic services like water failed.

“These people have no heart. When it is election time, they are some of the first people here to make promises to us. But once they have our vote and are in power, we do not see or hear from them,” he said.

Majoor said he used to haul water in a wheelbarrow from Lapland, making the gruelling climb up and down the steep path twice a day

“The walk back is not easy. It is not fun at all,” he said.

The situation is especially harsh for elderly residents and those living with chronic illnesses, who face daily struggles just for something as basic as water, Majoor said.

“There are a lot of sick and old people in our community who need water for things like taking medication.

“You can live without electricity, but you need water.”

Municipal spokesperson Sithembiso Soyaya said the intermittent water supply affecting Tiryville and surrounding areas was the result of reduced output at the Nooitgedagt Water Treatment Works.

“This is largely due to high raw water turbidity at the Nooitgedagt Water Treatment Works, coupled with electricity disruptions, voltage dips and increased water demand,” said Soyaya.

The reduced production has affected several reservoirs supplying Kariega, Despatch, KwaNobuhle, Chatty and Bloemendal, leading to disruptions in multiple communities.

“The municipality has been actively working to stabilise and maximise output at the treatment works,” Soyaya said.

An additional pump was brought online and officials expect water production to improve, he said, although further technical work might take one to two weeks to stabilise the system fully.

Soyaya acknowledged that the municipality’s tanker fleet was limited, making it difficult to supply all affected areas simultaneously.

Gift of the Givers intervenes

Gift of the Givers says the scale of the crisis quickly became clear when it was asked to intervene. The organisation’s Ali Sablay said community leaders had requested urgent assistance.

“When we arrived in Lapland, residents indicated that they last had water six weeks ago

“It was a mammoth task for the elderly to send children to neighbouring areas to collect water for them,” Sablay said.

“People were saying how frustrating it was, especially for the elderly on chronic medication, and young mothers.”

He said the organisation had since deployed water tankers to the area and continued to supply water daily.

On Thursday, the organisation installed several 2,500-litre JoJo tanks in strategic locations across the community.

“This makes it much easier for our truck to drop off water so that community members do not have to run after the truck,” Sablay said.

“Sometimes when people are at work, they miss the truck.”

The tanks, he said, would provide round-the-clock access to stored water while tankers continued to deliver supplies.

Commission investigates NMB water woes

The prolonged outages have also attracted the attention of the South African Human Rights Commission.

Dr Eileen Carter, the Commission’s Eastern Cape manager, said the body was concerned about reports of extended water interruptions in higher-lying parts of Tiryville.

“Access to sufficient water is a constitutional right under Section 27(1)(b). Extended interruptions affecting basic needs raise serious human rights concerns,” she said.

Carter confirmed it had received complaints about water supply problems in the Nelson Mandela Bay Metro and had launched an investigation.

Residents experiencing problems are encouraged to lodge formal complaints with the commission through its website or provincial offices.

Despite the hardship, Sablay said many residents had expressed gratitude for the intervention.

“We do understand their frustration,” he said. “But we are also met with a lot of thankfulness.” DM