
Water struggle in Motlhabe village
Community Alerts/Lentswe Buda/Motlhabe-Rustenburg/11 May 2017
Motlhabe Village is situated on the North Western Part of South Africa and it is 85KM away from Rustenburg under the Moses Kotane Local Municipality in the Pilanesburg area near Pilanesburg National Park, it happens to be one of the Mine hosting villages that are still struggling with access of water.
The Village is 85 years of age now and it has been hosting the Pilanesburg Platinum Mine for nine years Now(from 2008), the mine has provided the two neighbouring villages with water easily accessible from Tap, now the Mine is installing water pipe lines from the mine Reservoir to two other communities which are far away from the Mine and unaffected by the mine activities, whilst Motlhabe is still using one Borehole which was provided by the municipality decades ago and it fails to provide even half of the community.
Couple of years back the Mine And the Municipality had both provided the community with JoJo Tanks, but on the main streets and the local clinic only, and that wasn’t a solution because the tanks are rarely refilled ,in the previous week I visited Motlhabe Clinic, it hosts all the surrounding villages of ward 6 only to find that the clinic has no water at all(two empty JOJO tanks that were provided by the municipality and they are always not refilled in time and it is always crowded and it can sometimes take more than couple of weeks without water.
Yesterday (10thMay),I spent the day walking all-around the village trying to see the current status, it happened that it was the day both the Mine and the municipality were refilling the tanks, the Municipality always refill the Jojo tanks at the clinic and the mine water trucks refill the others on the village, I’ve walked into a number of elders in Thabaneng section and they say it has been couple of weeks now they have been waiting for the tanks to be refilled, every time after the tank is refilled it would be emptied within twelve hours, “the situation is so hard for us in our age, most especially us who live in Thabaneng section as it a mountainous area, I live with my grand son and he is at school now, I can’t wait for him because by after school the JoJo tank will be empty by then” said